New York City in the 1880s was a place of rapid change. Streets buzzed with horse-drawn coaches, immigrant workers, and well-dressed crowds gathering outside newspaper buildings. These photographs capture that world in remarkable detail — not as posed portraits, but as genuine slices of daily life across Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Coney Island.
The man behind the camera was Wallace G. Levison, a chemist and founder of the Departments of Mineralogy and Astronomy at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences. He was also a passionate photographer who used the technology both as a scientific instrument and a personal hobby. His images document a city and a community with unusual intimacy.
Men in suits and top hats pack the sidewalks of lower Manhattan. On November 6, 1884 — Election Day — crowds gathered outside the New York Tribune building, eager for news. This was a city that moved fast and dressed formally, even in its public excitement.
Wall Street in 1884 was already a center of financial power. The statue of George Washington stood at Federal Hall, where men in coats walked briskly past. Meanwhile, just a short distance away, immigrant communities were building their own corner of the city.
Near the Fulton Ferry, Italian immigrants navigated narrow sidewalks carrying the weight of a new life. This part of the city was dense and working-class — a sharp contrast to the polished crowds uptown. Levison’s lens didn’t shy away from these scenes.
Levison also turned his camera toward the parks and open spaces of Brooklyn, where children and adults spent leisure time with energy and creativity. Fort Greene Park was a favorite setting. He photographed friends and neighbors jumping off walls, racing, and playing — documenting a surprisingly active social life.
Capturing motion on film in the 1880s required precise timing and a fast shutter. Levison repeatedly photographed people mid-jump — a technical challenge he clearly enjoyed. His subjects included neighbors, family friends, and even his own daughter, Zelma.
The backyard at 314 Livingston Street became a recurring stage for Levison’s experiments. On consecutive days in June 1886, J.M. Cornell leaped in the yard while friends watched. A day later, Mildred Grimwood took her turn as Victor Grimwood and Zelma Levison looked on.
Children in Fort Greene didn’t just jump — they raced hoops, rode tricycles, and played ball in the park. Isabel Harter rode a tricycle while her sister Nellie rolled a hoop alongside her. These were ordinary afternoons made extraordinary by the fact that someone thought to photograph them.
Coney Island drew New Yorkers by the thousands during the summer months. Levison photographed bathers, performers, and beachgoers in scenes that show just how lively the shoreline was. Five girls posed by the water before a swimming match in 1887, and acrobats performed daring balancing acts on horseback at Dreamland.
Beach culture in late 19th-century New York was lively and social. Young male bathers walked in single file along the shoreline, actors chatted with swimmers, and women swung on ropes over the sand. A young Black boy guided a horse-drawn coach for the Surf Ave. Stage Co. along the Coney Island boardwalk — one of many workers whose labor kept the resort running.
Beyond the beaches, Levison documented quieter moments. Nathan Abbott and a young girl walked through Copp’s Hill Cemetery in May 1886. Miss Brown offered a cob of maize to a squirrel in 1888. H.B. Leckler’s dog Mace posed on a chair in Fort Greene in December of that same year. These small details bring the era to life in ways that grand historical accounts rarely do.
Five men competed in a walking race in June 1886. Edgar J. Taylor jumped off a barrel the following year. A man did push-ups inside a barrel on the beach in 1897. These were not staged publicity shots — they were records of genuine, spontaneous activity.
Prospect Park hosted bicycle parades by the mid-1890s, with riders streaming through the arch as spectators watched. Two well-dressed women played lawn tennis beside a lake. Dr. Ernest Palmer and his wife joined hands to form a bar for their dog to leap over. The city’s leisure culture was varied, physical, and deeply communal.
Levison also photographed everyday labor and local commerce. In 1889, a foreman and two workers prepared a house at 314 Livingston Street for moving. That same year, people gathered outside a railroad station bearing signs for the Tilly Foster Mines. An elephant from the Barnes Circus walked down Atlantic Street in Brooklyn in 1891 — a sight that stopped traffic and turned heads.
Seven girls — including Isabel and Nellie Harter, Nellie and Edie Dwight, Zelma Levison, and Edie Swan — stood together on a wall with two women in 1886. Gertrude Hubbell, Ruth Peters, and Mildred Grimwood played near the water at Arverne, Queens in 1897. Edith Poey leaped from a wooden pole onto the sand at Coney Island in 1887. These are not anonymous faces — Levison recorded names, dates, and places with the care of a true archivist.
That’s a lot of jumping.
Can we go to Fort Green and jump around as the people did back then
I came here to question that and am not surprised that’s the only comment here. Was jumping a way of stunting in photos back in the day?
Probably a good way to show off your gear’s fastest shutter speed at the time.
Jumping became the height of fashion once it was invented in the 1880s.
Can someone please explain the jumping on all these pics? Was jumping some kind of hobby back then?
They were taken to make the photo seem like the people were floating.
How bad would it smell if I woke up in 1880 New York City?
In 1880, there were over 100,000 horses in New York City producing between 15 and 35 pounds of waste each. Wealthier residents could afford to have their refuse carted away, but entire neighborhoods were plagued by foul odors and waste overflow. This crisis peaked in the 1870s when an equine virus killed hundreds of horses daily, adding to the already noxious smells. The Department of Street Cleaning was formed in 1881 to combat this issue, and the rise in public health awareness and sanitation helped improve New Yorkers’ quality of life. The car’s popularity made many stables obsolete by 1920. Despite improvements, some areas of the city still have distinct smells, particularly in the summer and around horse-drawn carriages in Central Park.
Those 80ish years of living from the time the Brooklyn bridge was built (the first suspension bridge in the world, 1880s) to a man on the moon must have been wild
It reminds me of the quote about Miss Blankenship from Mad Men: “She was born in a barn in 1898.” She died on the thirty-seventh floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut.”
Although people talk about how fast technology is moving today, and the ability to have everything in your pocket is amazing, I think it’s hard to argue it’s more revolutionary than if you lived from the 1880s to the 1960s or 1970s. Cars, jet planes, and spacecraft replaced horse-drawn carriages and steam trains. In the middle class, travel has been democratized from multi-day steam ships across the Atlantic to doing it in hours. Through telephones and fast communication, the world is becoming more interconnected. The fabric of one’s life in a city is literally transforming in a way that even NYC has not seen before.
Often, I try to envision myself in the context of the time, not knowing what was to come, and how today might or might not feel. It’s easy to think of today as the end of a line and history as a natural progression. We were coming out of a devastating war and pandemic a hundred years ago. People who lived through the Civil War were as close in time to those who lived through Vietnam then. Did people lose? Optimistic? Thankful? Desperate to survive? It’s time to visit the library again…
There are still places living in the past in the present, which is even more shocking. It’s amazing how quickly technology can change our lives
Humanity experienced the most dramatic transformation of the physical world during the 20th century.
During the 21st century, humans will have experienced the most dramatic transformation of the social fabric in history.
smoke, no smoke, smoke, no smoke
The purest form of collective culture is architecture. Harmonization and speed of transformation are machines unto themselves.
Modernism is a disease.
No, but it’s wasteful to replace an ornate and beautiful structure with a sleek concrete slab. In this case, a fucking statue replaced the building.
It doesn’t make sense to me that people think anything old is a master piece if someone left a Beaux-Arts mansion above it. It looks pretty silly, a high rise is not a four-story mansion, so why do you insist on building a mansion as a roof?
On a four-story mansion, this roof would look out of place. It’s much too big for that. An interesting silhouette and a soaring sense of grandeur and character are perfectly suited to a tower of this nature.
That’s a lot of jumping.
I think it was a fetish
What else was there to do in the 1880s? Get TB?
Migrants then and migrants now we can never stop them migrating to NYC.
People loved to jump back then. If only they had Van Halen like in the 1980’s!
I am very happy to now have that song stuck in my head. Thank you very much.
Lots of jumping
Being able to capture motion as an in-focus, sharp still was quite novel at that time. “Snapshots” were also relatively recent as the magic of photography moved from the realm of expensive professionals and long sit times into faster chemistry and faster lenses in more compact packages.
Where did they move the house at 314 Livingston Street to?