In the early 1940s, four news organizations — the New York Times, the Daily Mirror, News Syndicate Co. (now the Tribune Company), and Hearst Consolidated Publications — collaborated on a detailed market analysis of New York City, complete with statistics about racial/ethnic makeup, color-coded maps of rents, and photos and short narratives of each neighborhood. The Center for Urban Research, at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, recently posted the resulting 1943 document, Market Analysis. The interactive archive is a treasure trove of information about New York in the 1940s.
Described as the “district of the silver spoon,” the Upper East Side, then as now, was among the most affluent neighborhoods, with many rents above the then-exorbitant $150 mark (now about $2,500):