Pier 88 from Weehawken, New Jersey, November 9, 1937. “The Manhattan skyline taken from Weehawken, New Jersey. The S.S. ""Normandie"" is docked next to the French Line building (at Pier 88) and in the distance are: the RCA Building, the R.K.O. Building, the Time & Life Building, the General Electric Building, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the Hotel Taft.”

“Twelfth Avenue, north from West 45th Street, showing this marginal thoroughfare prior to improvement. The pier shown is No. 86 North River, located at the foot of 46th Street. The bend beyond is at 47th Street. April 11, 1924.” Eugene Armbruster’s photo captures the West Side waterfront about a decade prior to the development of the West Side Elevated Highway. Today, Pier 86 (lower left) is home to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, aboard the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned World War II-era aircraft carrier.

The West Midtown Ferry Terminal, operated by the New York Waterway company, is located at Pier 79 on the Hudson River and 39th Street. The terminal's design includes a bus garage and incorporates two of the Lincoln Tunnel's ventilation shafts. The air shafts are constructed of brick in the Art Deco Style. The original terminal, seen here, was built in 1985. An updated design was completed in the mid-2000s after September 11th prompted fears surrounding train travel increased demand for ferry service. The terminal is owned by the New York City but leased to New York Waterway, a private transportation company.

Kalman 'Kalmele' Weitz, known as “The Boy Cantor,” and ‘The Young Caruso” was born in 1916 in Grosswardein in Austro-Hungary on the Romanian border in what is currently known as Oradea, Romania. Weitz was a Jewish liturgical musician, concert performer frequently accompanying himself on piano, and a cantor, who hailed from a creative family of traditional scribes, rabbis, musicians and more. He debuted at six years of age before hundreds in a packed local synagogue on a Jewish holiday, and subsequently went on to tour widely in Central and Western Europe, even appearing in a musical film directed by composer Ferdinand Straub.

Church of Sts. Cyril & Methodius and St. Raphael, ca. 1977. This French Gothic church was constructed between 1901 and 1903 as St. Raphael. Designed by George H. Streeton, the parish of St. Raphael served the poor Irish community of Hell's Kitchen. That Irish parish dated to 1886. In the late 19th and early 20th century Catholic Croatian immigrants were also moving into the west side neighborhood. Many worked on the docks, rail yards, and factories near the waterfront. They had no Croatian language church, though in the early 20th century a Croatian priest began celebrating marriages and christenings in an Italian parish nearby. In 1913 the parish of Sts. Cyril & Methodius was established in a small disused church at 552 West 50th Street. They remained there until the 1970s when they purchased a back back building to St. Raphael. Soon though they were given permission to take over use of the whole church building. The church was renovated after the transfer of parishes. In the 1990s it was a center of relief assistance during the Bosnian War. Today it continues to have massed said in both English and Croatian.

631 West 46th Street, November 14, 1947.

New York's first automat opened in 1912. It was operated by the Philadelphia-based food service company Horn & Hardart, who were the first non-Europeans to receive patented vending machines from Max Sielaff's Automat factory in Berlin.

United Parcel Service Building, seen at the corner of 12th Avenue and West 43rd Street, July 1, 1965. Rendered in glass and a light brown brick, the UPS Building is a modernist structure built in 1961-1962 The firm that designed this building, Leon & Lionel Levy, were best known for the New York Coliseum, a convention center on Columbus Circle erected in 1956 through the influence of master planner Robert Moses.

Entering service in 1935, the S.S. Normandie was built for the French Line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique in Saint-Nazaire France. It was one of the finest steamships ever built, built for what was thought to be a new age of sea travel.

"39th Street, between Twelfth and Eleventh Avenues, looking east, showing a flock of sheep in front of the slaughter house at No. 627, October 31, 1931." West 39th Street near the Hudson River was the center of the city's slaughterhouse district from the middle of the 19th century through the 1950s. Called “Abattoir Row," cattle and other livestock were ferried across the river and held in the slaughterhouses of this neighborhood before being processed for consumption in New York's homes and restaurants. The infrastructure for this operation included a cow tunnel under 12th Avenue for livestock exiting the ferries, and in 1955, an aluminum-sided bridge built above the street so the cattle did not stop the flow of traffic. The pictured block of 39th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues no longer exists, a victim of the Javits Center construction in the late 1970s. Some sources suggest that whatever remained of the cow tunnels were also lost with that development.