1980s New York Tax Photographs

The recent digitization of the Municipal Archives collection of 1940s tax photographs, and the subsequent interest by the New York Times in the 1980s Tax Photographs, got us thinking about the truly weird history of the 1980s Tax Photographs.

Let’s start with the 1940s pictures. The Department of Taxation (as the City’s Department of Finance was then called) had started the photograph project in 1939 with help from the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Only part of Manhattan was shot in late 1939; most of the rest of the city was shot in 1940 and in early 1941. Work continued on the project until 1943, at which point WPA support ended, and the Department of Taxation took full control of the project. During the post-war boom, from 1946 to 1951, Taxation shot over 50,000 new photographs. The Municipal Archives have most of those negatives, but after 1951 the only records of the reshoots are the prints attached to the property assessment cards. These are dutifully stamped with the year, 1966, 1971, and so on. In some instances in the late 1970s, color Polaroids of the property were attached… read more >