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Joseph Covino New York City Postcards

Pennsylvania Station. Postmark February 8, 1915. Pennsylvania Station. Horn & Hardart Automat - Times Square. Main Lagoon, Luna Park - Coney Island. Postmark August 15, 1910. Dreamland - Coney Island. The New McAdoo Tunnel. Postmark August 28, 1911. Bridge of Tomorrow - 1939 New York World's Fair. General Motors Futurama. 1939 New York World's Fair. Abbey Hotel.
Pennsylvania Station. Postmark February 8, 1915.

This collection boasts over 2,500 postcards donated to The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture Archive by collector Joseph Covino in three separate installments between 1999 and 2003. Dating from the early 1900s, these postcards depict landmarks, city views, neighborhoods, the city’s infrastructure, public spaces and numerous building typologies of 20th Century New York, including many lost works of architecture.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.