Oh my heavens. Hundreds of gorgeous photos of old New York. Shots you’ve never seen before. Like the one above of painters on the Brooklyn Bridge. With no safety harnesses or anything! I could look at these all day. In fact, I just did.

The New York City Municipal Archives has just released a database of over 870,000 photos from its collection of more than 2 million images of New York throughout the 20th century.

Here are just a few of the great ones, curated by Alan Taylor from The Atlantic.
(Click images to enlarge.)

To see more (and there are SO MANY MORE), go to The Atlantic, or go directly to the NYC Municipal Archives Gallery. You’ll lose half your day there. But you’ll thank me.

Just found these Vintage Carnival Gambling Boards over at the always exciting Modern Fifty. What do you think they are?

Regardless, wouldn’t they look fantastic in a kids room?

Buy them here.

Wow wow wow. Just, wow.

Moddern Kiddo has a phenomenal post up today with about a million vintage kids’ record covers. If I weren’t careful, I’d end up posting every one of them here for you to see. But instead go over there and check em all out. I’m always a sucker for the drawn-on-a-napkin, bleedy technique above. And the red title on the pink background? With the fox’s purple hat? Is fantastic.

And the panels in this one. With the crazy color palette. Red, moss green, yellow, flesh and navy? Are you kidding me? I can barely stop staring at it.

La la la la, lightbulb.

(All photos are credited at the original post. Go see.
And thanks Modern Kiddo for being so altogether awesome.)

New, limited edition book, about Helvetica’s infiltration of the New York City subway system. Written by Paul Shaw. Including hundreds of photos, along with reproductions of pages from various MTA and NYCTA signage manuals. Oh, I’m sorry — was that me drooling? Goodness, how embarrassing.

I lived in New York for 6 years, and I return every year at least twice, and to count the number of photos I have taken down in the subway would be impossible. I am obsessed with its haphazard permanence, its raw, often accidental beauty, and its consistent inconsistency.

I can’t wait to hold this book in my hand.

But from the point of view of a writer/designer, what could be more fun than Pulitzer Prize winning plays disguised as pulp fiction!

I love the Thomas Hart Benton art on Streetcar. Doesn’t it feel exactly like the play?