After returning to New York from Paris in 1929, photographer Berenice Abbott set out to document the changing landscape she encountered in the city. Despite initially struggling to find funding for this endeavor, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project to complete a collection that became known as Changing New York. Although Abbott’s focus was the city’s changing nature, examining her photographs almost a century later brings to light a contrasting theme: the continuity within the change; aspects of New York life that have remained constant through the decades, serving as a reflection of some of the many things that make New York New York.

East 1st Street, 1937. The photographer, Berenice Abbott, noted that these building are "Old Law Tenements." These were building constructed after the passage of the Tenement House Act of 1879, but before 1901, when the "New Law" legislation passed. The most important feature of the 1879 law was the requirement that any habitable room have cross ventilation. The builders of these structures complied by having many of the windows opening to air shafts between the buildings. These windows were called "tuberculous windows" as the aim was to combat (or at least reduce the frequency of) the spread of disease in these densely crowded buildings. Unfortunately this style of tenement was generally unsuccessful. Residents tossed garbage, dirty water, and waste into the shafts and the shafts caused fire to spread between buildings faster. The 1901 law mandated an exterior-facing windows in each room of new residences as well as bathroom facilities in each unit. The Old Law Tenements had symmetrical floor plans and tended towards architecturally fanciful facades with ornamentation, including human and animal gargoyles.