CUL Digital Collections: New York Real Estate Brochure Collection Now Includes Manhattan

The Libraries are pleased to announce that The New York Real Estate Brochure Collection now includes Manhattan. This online collection covers approximately 3,000 buildings and more than 13,000 images from brochures including drawings, floor plans and marketing material from Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The New York Real Estate Brochure Collection is an invaluable resource for studying and conducting research about New York City apartment buildings. As J. David Goodman of The New York Times noted, "It’s an incredible resource for floor-plan addicts (or a kind of Streeteasy for time travelers.) There’s definitely a dissertation waiting in all the colorful apartment hyperbole of yore."

You can browse or search by address, building name, neighborhood, architect, and owner/agent. Buildings are also encoded with GIS coordinates so that locations and neighborhoods can be displayed using the Google Maps application. We invite you to contribute comments about individual buildings, creating an even richer set of descriptions and potentially valuable historical context. The Real Estate Brochures collection is divided into places, such as buildings or neighborhoods, and people, such as architects or owners/agents.

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Digitized images for the remaining boroughs are scheduled to be released later in 2010.