During the 1910s, Joseph P. Day was a real-estate developer on the rise. He'd earned a formidable reputation by the age of 21 after auctioning off large swaths of land in Brooklyn and Queens. Day set his eyes on the Bronx as the next up-and-coming portion of the city. He commissioned photographer William D. Hassler to capture areas of undeveloped land—in effect creating a survey of a quickly growing city. Over two days in 1914, Day sold over four hundred lots of undeveloped land.