Columbus Circle ca. 1936 From the ninth floor of the General Motors Building on West 58th Street, Abbott photographed Columbus Circle through the back of the Schenley Rye neon sign mounted on the New York Journal Building. The Circle’s statue of Columbus, erected in 1892 to commemorate the quadricentennial of his ocean voyage, occupies the center of the photograph but is dwarfed by an even more popular landmark, the Coca-Cola sign standing atop the American Circle Building. The dominance of the commercial signs over the Columbus statue emphasizes modern advertising’s subversion of traditional civic imagery. In a variant image, Abbott adopted a horizontal format and boldly superimposed the Schenley sign over the entire cityscape, totally obscuring the panorama. In 1964, Huntington Hartford’s iconoclastic Museum of Modern Art replaced the New York Journal Building. Two years later, the 44-story Gulf and Western Tower replaced the American Circle Building along with the much-loved Coca-Cola sign.

Columbus Circle ca. 1918 Max Schreyer traveled around the United States and Europe making a name for himself by riding a bicycle down a wooden chute, launching himself into the air and landing in a tank of water. Photographer William Hassler was there for the event at Broadway and 59th Street on November 27, 1918. Schreyer succeeded on that day, but six months later, performing in Van Cortlandt Park, his famous “Leap of Death” finally proved fatal

The monument to Christopher Columbus in what we now call Columbus Circle was one of the dozens of monuments erected in the Americas and Europe to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage, but this one was especially significant to New York’s growing Italian American population. Led by Carlo Barsotti, publisher of the newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano, the Italian American community raised funds and paid for the monument itself. At the time, Columbus, born in Genoa, was perhaps the most widely celebrated figure of Italian descent in the United States. As Italian immigrants faced discrimination and struggled to forge an identity in their new home, many found in Columbus a symbol of both Italian heritage and American pride. At the unveiling, on October 12, 1892, Luigi Palma di Cesnola addressed the 10,000 people in attendance: "The countrymen of Columbus, the Italians resident and citizens in the United States, conscious indeed that his true monument is this great land, its institutions, its prosperity, its blessings, its lessons of advance for all humanity, have yet desired to testify, to at least the present generation, their full and unfailing sense of their great peculiar debt. They have procured, in contributions great and small, but uniformly large in spirit, the execution of this monument; and they have erected and presented it in token of their affection and gratitude to this great and beloved country; the country in which they have found a permanent home, a more congenial form of government, and better and freer facilities honorably to earn their livelihood."

Thanksgiving—comfortable or contentious, there are some things we've come to expect from this day each year. Whether it's the presidential turkey pardon, watching the big game, or eating too much, many families have time-honored traditions and individual ways to celebrate. One of these is The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! This Story is an abbreviated version, the original can be viewed here.

In October 1892 the Italian government dedicated this granite monument with its depiction of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, to the people of America. The statue of Columbus which now tops the monument was placed there two years later. The Tichenor Riding School, prominent in this card, was one of the many Upper West Side riding stables whose close proximity to Central Park made the location ideal for horseback riding. The building was razed in the late 1960s.

By Susan Smith-Peter Using crutches because of an early bout with meningitis, Percy Loomis Sperr managed to photograph nearly all of New York City from the 1920s to the 1940s. Sperr sought to document and preserve the city as fully as possible. He was interested in telling the story of New York through the lives and environments of everyday people. This work brought him into contact with important photographers such as Berenice Abbott and, to a lesser extent, Walker Evans. And his work has deeply shaped our vision of this New York City during the Jazz Age and Depression-era. Among other things, it helped set design for such movies as The Godfather and The Great Gatsby (1974) and serves as the foundation for such popular apps as OldNYC and Urban Archive. Yet the artist himself remains little known. This blog sets out to establish the basic facts of his life, and suggests lines of possible research, using his previously unanalyzed writings and undigitized albums as well as his better-known works. Born on December 27, 1899, Sperr attended Oberlin College, where he served as the associate editor of the Annual and the managing editor of the Review. In 1916, a list of graduates places him in Columbus, Ohio, care of the Stoneman Press. As he told the Newark Sunday News in 1963, the year before his death, “the first of my sins was to teach in a small private school in California. I taught the ABCs, trigonometry and everything in between. The school closed while I was on vacation, so I wandered around in printing, freelance writing and photography.” His draft card for World War One shows that he was already living in New York in 1917, at 2887 Bailey Avenue in the Bronx. It also noted that his right leg was permanently paralyzed and that he was a printer at the Lumitone Art Company. His World War Two draft card was even blunter, simply stating, “lame.” He moved to Staten Island in 1924, during which time he was “principally a freelance writer, doing articles largely for the Sunday magazine sections of newspapers. Many of these articles concern\[ed] aspects of the New York Public Library.”

The images gathered here attest to the Forward’s unwavering commitment to public service journalism and to the importance of enhancing Jewish community engagement here and abroad. The paper was founded by socialists and read by a community of workers who saw calls for social justice, protests and demonstrations as means to attain their democratically achieved rights – and also as a way to inform the public.

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.

Are you ready for a closeup? Try your hand at re-creating these historic photos at Columbus Circle! This challenge is only available to our iOS app users. If you don't yet have the Urban Archive App, download it here. Each location in this challenge has an address and a historic image tied to it. Check-in at each location by tapping the lock icon to the left of the clue. If you’re in the right place, it will turn green. Your challenge today is to take as many then-and-now photos as you can. Tap the image, and then the recreate button to line up the historical image with your present-day view. Once you're happy with your photo, hit save to add it to your camera roll. Please share these photos with team@urbanarchive.nyc once you've completed the challenge. Happy snapping!

The monument at Columbus Circle's dedication was a moment of triumph for New York City's immigrant Italian population.

Take a walk in the beautiful Upper West Side. Start at Columbus Circle and discover the cultural and religious landmarks and the extravagant apartment buildings of this affluent neighborhood.

As the Great Depression wore on, the Socialist Party organized protesters who demonstrated against unemployment and demanded immediate government aid. The Forward called for its readers to march in support of this demonstration by publishing the date and locale atop its masthead.