From Chinatown and the High Line to Washington Square Park fountain and Harlem, scenes from the summer of 1939 are brought vividly to life in rare color footage of New York City.
The Romano Archives footage has been released 74 years after a French tourist captured the scenes on 16mm Kodachrome.
Life appears carefree in summertime Manhattan the year the city hosted the World Fair in Flushing Meadows and months before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Top of the rock: Tourists enjoy the view from the Rockefeller observation deck in 1939
Cooling off: Children splash around in Washington Square Park fountain on the hot summer's day
Still popular: The fountain in Washington Square Park is still a favored place to cool off on a hot day
While some scenes, such as the tourists gathered on the Rockefeller observation deck, appear unchanged today, footage of the High Line shows trains using the elevated railway that has since been converted into a park.
The city's streets appear congested even in 1939, with classic cars and double decker buses. Even the famed yellow cabs look different.
The French cameraman captured city folk enjoying the summer's day, when it was still possible to buy a pina colada for 5c. Men sit smoking on the steps of brownstones, market traders sell fruit and vegetables off street stalls and women in elegant dresses and hats chat over coffee. Children paddling and running through Washington Square Park fountain, an open-top bus shows tourists the city sights, and designer shops such as Cartier draw in shoppers.
Changing times: A train is seen on the High Line, which has since been transformed into an elevated park
City life: Neighbors are seen chatting on the steps of a Harlem brownstone by cameraman Jean Vivier
Fresh look: Everyday scenes like this market trader selling vegetables on a street corner were recorded
Color film was gaining popularity at the end of the Thirties. In the year this amateur footage was taken, Technicolor was being used in the 1939 classics Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
A spokesman for the archive told the Huffington Post the footage was part of a longer film shot by Jean Vivier, who sailed from Marseille to New York on the SS Normandie for a vacation.
Kodak amateur movie cameras had been available since 1935. According to the company’s website, 'Kodachrime Film was introduced and became the first commercially successful amateur color film.'
Timeless: Some scenes, such as the statue of Prometheus outside the Rockefeller Center, remain unchanged
Big apple: New York City was a popular draw for tourists in 1939, the year it hosted the World Fair
Although Kodak had introduced sound on film in 1937, Vivier's film was silent, with a score added later, according to Yahoo News.
Vivier's film was released by the Romano Archive, a digital archive of American and European history privately owned by the Italian Vincent 'Enzo' Romano.
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