See 100 years of New York City—through the lens of Nat Geo photographers
As New York City celebrates the 400th anniversary of its founding, National Geographic looks back on more than a century of covering the spirited metropolis.
In the summer of 1957, a replica of the Mayflower sailed into New York Harbor. Dubbed the Mayflower II, it had just finished retracing the Pilgrims’ 1620 journey across the Atlantic to establish a colony in America. New York City celebrated its arrival with a ticker-tape parade.
That November, National Geographic published an article written by the ship’s captain about the Mayflower II’s voyage, full of photos of its ocean journey and a victorious arrival in New York City (which was not a stop on the original ship’s route to Plymouth, Massachusetts).
As the city this year celebrates the 400th anniversary of its founding as the Dutch outpost New Amsterdam, National Geographic looked back on its coverage of the city over the last century.
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An early article highlighted its draws. “It has more Irish and their sons and daughters than Dublin, more Italians and their children than Rome,” the author wrote. “But New York’s appeal is as much to the people of the United States as to those of the outer world ... New York is indeed the Niagara of American life ... so through this city passes the vast river of humanity that seeks the sea of opportunity in the world beyond.”
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National Geographic often has showed readers parts of the world they might never visit—and in the magazine’s early days that included not just distant lands but the vibrant metropolis of New York City. “Most people didn’t get the opportunity to travel a lot or to travel really far,” says Cathy Hunter, senior archivist at the National Geographic Society. In a sense, Hunter says, the magazine did “the legwork for you and show[ed] you the most famous sites.”
Many of the magazine’s first stories about the city focused on architecture, people, and culture—elements that lent the armchair travel experience.
“Go up on any high hotel roof after sunset and watch the city come to life,” wrote the author of the 1930 article “This Giant That Is New York.” “By electric moons, rainbows, and fixed comets you see Manhattan blaze from dusk into gorgeous theatrical illumination.”
The editorial focus shifted over time as the magazine began to cover more relevant angles: environmental issues like water pollution and landfills, and later, how the September 11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the city.
Yet one of the constants in National Geographic coverage, which spans over a century, is change. In a 2015 article called “New New York,” writer Pete Hamill reflected on the 80 years he’d lived in the city and the transformation of its skyline.
“We New Yorkers know that we live in a dynamic city,” he wrote, “always changing, evolving, building.”
‘The Metropolis of Mankind’
National Geographic published its first major article about New York City in the July 1918 issue. Called “New York—The Metropolis of Mankind,” it gave readers a broad overview of the city just as it was rising to global prominence in the final months of World War I.
“A city which the Great War has made the Earth’s international trading center and civilization’s crowning metropolis,” the article proclaimed, “Gotham now commands a new interest, arouses a new pride in its achievements, excites a new feeling of wonder, and stirs in every American breast a realization that it is a city of all the people, national in all its aspects.”
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“The Metropolis of Mankind” came out at a time when National Geographic was becoming synonymous for publishing photos that held appeal for those armchair travelers, Hunter says. Readers could gaze in awe at the size of a crowd in front of the New York Stock Exchange, wonder at the length of a traffic jam of cars (and at least one horse) on 42nd Street, and take in a full view of the Woolworth Building—which, at nearly 242 meters, was then the tallest building in the world.
And the buildings kept getting taller. The 1930 feature “This Giant That Is New York” showed readers the new tallest building in the world, the 319-meter Chrysler Building, which had opened earlier that year. It also offered a glimpse of the ongoing construction of the Empire State Building, which promised to be even bigger.
‘Tourist Manhattan’
As National Geographic’s popularity grew, it continued to serve as inspiration but also began to support real-life travelers in navigating the Big Apple.
When New York City hosted its first World’s Fair, in April 1939, that month’s issue of the magazine came with a supplemental map called “The Reaches of New York City.” The next time the World’s Fair rolled around, in 1964, National Geographic sent subscribers a two-part map of “Greater New York” and “Tourist Manhattan.”
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The magazine began to explore areas of New York City around this time. In 1959, the magazine ran a piece on the Staten Island Ferry, dubbing it New York’s Seagoing Bus and highlighting its essential role for commuters from that borough. In 1977, it published a story about Harlem by Frank Hercules, a Trinidad-born writer who moved to the neighborhood in the 1940s. “To live in Harlem,” he wrote, “is sometimes to hear the siren song of success, often to be denied by heaven and disdained by hell, yet always to hope anew each morning, whatever yesterday’s despair.”
In both 1960 and 1993, the magazine featured stories on Central Park that countered the iconic park’s reputation at the time as a crime haven—a myth that often turned tourists away from visiting the park. The ’93 story blamed the media for its role in perpetuating this myth and instead described the park as an “oasis in the city.”
Modern coverage
Starting around the 1970s, another trend emerged: amid an awakening environmental movement, the magazine began to cover more of the issues for which it’s known today. Hunter says this reflected a changing editorial outlook.
“In the early days…the magazine did not do stories that were not pretty,” she says.
In 1978 the article “Hudson: ‘That River’s Alive’” focused on the high pollution levels from the 1960s that had led to state and federal efforts to clean the Hudson River and other U.S. waterways. By 1978, the Hudson River had rebounded and saw a proliferation of aquatic life, prompting fishermen interviewed for the article to comment, “That river’s alive.”
A 1991 story about landfills addressed the growing problems posed by sites such as Staten Island’s Fresh Kills. (Decades later, the city is redeveloping it into Freshkills Park, which promises to be three times the size of Central Park.)
Other articles focused on a city whose residents were in crisis. A year after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, National Geographic ran a piece featuring first-person stories from two people who lived in zip code 10013, right next to the World Trade Center. Two decades later, in August 2020, the magazine published photos of a markedly less bustling New York City amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as both residents and tourists stayed home.
In more than a century of coverage, National Geographic depicted a New York City that is not only a thrilling place to visit but a real place with real people who call it home. In Pete Hamill’s 2015 reflection on his decades as a New Yorker, he described his first time visiting the interior of One World Trade Center—built on the former site of the Twin Towers, whose destruction he had witnessed in person.
“I moved closer to the windows and looked down,” he wrote. “There it was, the Woolworth Building. My favorite. Still here. Changing color in the fading sun.”
