A Taxing Photograph: The WPA Real Property Survey of New York City.

This article presents the picture of New York City during 1930's as captured by real property survey of the city, done by a governmental body, Works Progress Administration. This survey was divided into two systematic projects of documentary photography. One of these, Berenice Abbott's Changing New York, is well known. It produced over 300 views of a rapidly changing urban environment. The second major photographic portrait of the city during the Great Depression also records the changing cityspace, but this is generally unknown. It is comprised of over 700 000 black and white photographs depicting every real state in the city. The purpose of this project, named as "Real Property Tax Card Record System for the City of New York," was to collect and record information about every piece of real estate in the city in order to assess and levy property taxes in an equitable manner. These photographic collections now serve as one of the most interesting record of the history and the tax photographs are used by architects, historic preservationists, historians and film consultants as documentary evidence of the state of the building and the state of the city during 1930 and 1940.