The More Things Change, The More They...Well, You Know

A reader with an incredible eye and superb research skills tipped us off this with a comment. The building on top is 150-158 Fourth Avenue in 1936. The building on the bottom is 150-158 Fourth Avenue in 2007. We posted about the building a few days ago. The photo is from the Museum of the City of New York. Here's the description of the building in '36:

A few blocks from the busy intersection depicted in Billboards and Signs, Abbott found this boarded-up row of old-law tenements. The row was built circa 1880 for the Irish immigrants who worked on the railroad and road construction drives of that era. Rather than conform with the new fire and sanitation regulations, the Fulton Savings Bank, which owned the buildings, abandoned them. The corner building, however, remained occupied by a radiator products store on the ground floor, with apartments above.

The geometric pattern formed by the blocked windows attracted Abbott's eye, as did the ground-floor profusion of posters for movies (My Man Godfrey), sports (Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Chicago Cardinals), and cabaret (Harlem Nite). Taken one week before election day, the photograph also shows a Democratic Party campaign poster for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Governor Herbert K. Lehman.

These tenements survived decades of decline and, with Fort Greene's recent revival, have been renovated and are occupied.

Even the corner building is in use as it was in the '36 photo, though we're thinking the writer spoke too soon in terms of the building being "renovated" and "occupied." We're thinking we like the 1936 version of abandonment better than the 2007 one because of the posters.