Daily What?! Rare Color Film of NYC in 1939

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For today’s Daily What?! we bring you this rare color film of New York City in 1939 via NBC News. The clip was originally posted to YouTube by UnknownWW2inColor. Italian Vincent Romano of ROMANO-ARCHIVES independently works on digitizing old archival material about the U.S. from the late 1800s to the 1970s. According to the Huffington Post, the footage is part of a longer film shot by a French tourist named Jean Vivier who sailed to New York from Marseille on the SS Normandie. We love Vivier’s shots of Chinatown, Harlem, Rockefeller Center and the New York City skyline, not to mention the old elevated trains and vintage buses!
We’re excited to see that color photos and films from the early 20th century are popping up, giving us a rare glimpse into what our cities were really like back then. Check out these rare color photographs of Paris from the early 20th century.
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