I’m not sure I’d feel safe traveling in an airship. I’ve heard that recording of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster too many times.
But I can’t stop gazing at these photos of airships floating through the skies of early 1930s Manhattan, with the modern machine-age cityscape spread out and on display, building by building.
Both of these photos show the US Navy’s USS Akron. In the first photo, we see downtown Manhattan: the Woolworth Building, the Singer Tower (RIP), a smaller Battery Park—or at least it seems smaller. What’s the green space in the center, what look like treetops?
Manhattan is more slender in this photo. Without the landfill from the digging of the World Trade Center, there’s no Battery Park City on the Hudson side. Ship traffic ruled.
In the second photo, the USS Akron is hovering closer to Central Park. The contours of the East River can be seen; the sun seems to shine on the elegant high-rises and towers of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue.
Manhattan is a giant rectangle here, neatly divided by wide avenues. The Gothic roofline of the Plaza Hotel comes into view. The Central Park Reservoir dominates the park. I never realized it stretched from the East Side almost all the way to the West.
[Images: Wikipedia]
Tags: 1930s Manhattan Cityscape Photo, 1930s Manhattan View From Sky, Airship View of 1930s Manhattan, USS Akron Airship New York City, View of Manhattan 1930s
Ephemeral New York 
December 11, 2023 at 7:55 am |
Could those treetops have been a more verdant Washington Square?
December 11, 2023 at 1:53 pm |
That’s what I though at first as well. But it seems too close to downtown, as Rob C notes in a comment below.
December 12, 2023 at 7:41 pm
I thought at first of Washington Square Park, Bryant Park (too far north) and Grammercy Park (too far east). I’m now fairly sure that what we’re looking at isn’t a park at all, but simply Greenwich Village, whose tree-lined streets, private residences, and lack of tall buildings have long made it an oasis in lower Manhattan.
December 11, 2023 at 8:10 am |
Try walking around it, takes a few hours but what a great experience. Did it back in he 1960s before there was a fence around it.
December 12, 2023 at 11:41 am |
I remember walking for miles and not seeing a fence, just stones leading down to the reservoir. They probably put the fence up later, I guess.
December 11, 2023 at 8:42 am |
What ever happened to the Goodyear blimp that used to ply those same airwaves? I haven’t seen it in several years.
December 11, 2023 at 2:06 pm |
A Goodyear blimp sighting used to be quite noteworthy! I haven’t seen it in years either, but I just Googled the site and apparently it still flies around.
December 12, 2023 at 12:11 pm
I haven’t seen the Goodyear blimp in some time.
The closest I ever came to a blimp/airship/dirigible was around 1985, when I was on the 7 train, on my way to a Mets’ game. (Why else would someone living in Manhattan, as I was at the time, have taken the 7 train? Flushing Chinatown hadn’t really become the food destination it is now!) The train stopped somewhere between the 103rd and 111th Street stations. “Attention passengers,” the conductor intoned. “We are being held by the Goodyear blimp in our path.”
Another voice blared, “Correction: That’s a Fuji blimp.”
December 12, 2023 at 2:23 pm
Question: was Colonel Blimp named for
the airship or was it the other way around?
December 11, 2023 at 10:08 am |
My dad and his cousins saw the Hindenburg float over Brooklyn on its way to Lakehurst. The cousin, who was younger than my dad, said it looked scary.
December 11, 2023 at 10:24 am |
The Hellgate Bridge can be seen, but not the Tri-boro. So, this is from ’30 or ’31. Also, Battery Park had the Aquarium at the time.
December 11, 2023 at 2:07 pm |
Great eye, finding the Aquarium; I’d forgotten it was at Castle Clinton back then. You’re correct: photos date to 1931.
December 11, 2023 at 8:12 pm
Another argument in favor of the 1931 date: the Cities Service Building at 70 Pine Street, visible just below the blimp’s cockpit, saw construction began in 1930 and opened in May 1932. It’s clearly very far along in this photo, even if the blimp blocks our view of the top of the building. Also, the City Bank–Farmers Trust Building at 20 Exchange Place (below the blimp’s nose), which opened May 1931, certainly appears finished, at least on the exterior.
December 11, 2023 at 11:02 am |
The USS Akron was destroyed in a thunderstorm off the coast of New Jersey on the morning of 4 April 1933, killing 73 of the 76 crewmen and passengers. The accident involved the greatest loss of life in any airship crash.
December 11, 2023 at 2:07 pm |
Thanks for the info, I had no idea.
December 16, 2023 at 12:49 pm |
Truly ironic, since it carried the safer Helium, rather than the highly flammable Hydrogen that filled the Hindenburg.
December 11, 2023 at 11:12 am |
Having spent way too long looking at this I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re not tree tops but actually a weird effect on the photo from dark mostly-two-story buildings/townhouses, and a shadow cast by a cloud not shown on the photo. There’s a similar effect on the right side of the photo over what is the LES/East village.
There’s a much higher res image on wiki you can zoom in on and look: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/USS_Akron_%28ZRS-4%29_in_flight_over_Manhattan%2C_circa_1931-1933.jpg
It’s not Washington Square Park because you can see 1 Fifth Ave quite clearly one block to the right. It does look a LOT like trees but that area appears to be the triangle made by Greenwich Ave/6th ave/ 14th st and a little bit south of it. I’ve checked maps and there’s nothing to suggest park land there.
December 11, 2023 at 2:07 pm |
You’re correct, thanks for the hi-res!
December 11, 2023 at 11:23 pm |
Every
December 11, 2023 at 11:28 pm |
Every ten years or so, an article will appear in newspaper or magazine, stating that the next great age of the airships is coming, mainly to function as the next breakthrough in cargo shipping. They list new startup companies that will build these ships, even though there is no feasible way to load and unload cargo on them.
Completely impractical in the 1930’s, it is still impractical today, and that next great age of the airships never comes and never will. Glenn in Brooklyn, NY.
December 12, 2023 at 10:01 am |
Battery Park is no smaller or larger than it is today. The thing that really stands out for me is the multiple piers parading up the Hudson and East Rivers, all of which are gone today.
December 12, 2023 at 11:48 am |
The piers also stood out for me too. Is there a story about the demise of the piers surrounding Manhattan?
December 12, 2023 at 12:18 pm |
In the first photo, the piers look almost like reflections of the tall buildings. At least, there is a kind of symmetry between the structures that jut out into the water and the ones that reach for the sky.
Tom B makes a good point. Much has been written about how Robert Moses, de-industrialization and the suburbs changed New York. But there doesn’t seem to be as much about how the piers disappeared, and the role that played in changing Manhattan–and the rest of the city. After all, the whole reason New York was settled in the first place was its harbor, and this was a port city until, probably, some time after World War II.
December 13, 2023 at 12:06 am |
The symmetry of the piers and the tall buildings is eerie, isn’t it? So many of those piers fell into disrepair as shipping transformed from actual ships to trucks and planes. On the margins of Manhattan, the piers became places for marginalized people to gather. Today the waterfront is all about sanitized recreation.
December 12, 2023 at 2:32 pm |
Growing up in Whitestone Queens I used to see the Goodyear blimp daily in the afternoon & also at night. My Dad would to take us to Flushing airfield to see the Goodyear blimp land.
December 12, 2023 at 3:39 pm |
Monderos–I have been by the Flushing Airfield. Opened in 1929, it was New York’s “second” commercial airport: Newark opened a year earlier and LaGuardia a decade later.
I know that blimps and a skywriting company operated from there. So did private planes: a Piper Twin Comanche crashed shortly after takeoff, killing everyone on board. That, and frequent flooding, led to the airport’s closure in 1984.
December 12, 2023 at 4:15 pm |
velovixen Yes that’s true. Across the street now is Target , BJ’S Wholesale club , ShopRite & whole lot of others.
December 13, 2023 at 10:58 am |
Very cool photo
December 13, 2023 at 8:28 pm |
I saw an airship the size of the Akron out a window on W.81st St. in the mid-1950s. Does anyone know the name of it.? (I understand it was flown by the military.)
December 18, 2023 at 1:18 am |
I notice that London Terrace apartments in Chelsea are quite prominent in the upper left corner. They were completed in 1930. It must have been a wonder at the time as it was then the worlds largest apartment building. Today it barely rates a glance.