Two photographs from Central Park in 1862

One of the earliest photographers to work in New York, Victor Prevost studied photography in France under Paul Delaroche and Gustave Le Gray. In 1850 he came to New York and established a studio at Broadway and Bleecker Street, but he achieved only limited commercial success and gave up photography as a career in 1857. He continued, however, to take photographs of major construction projects in New York City, the most important of which are his images of the then-new Central Park. Shot mostly during the summer of 1862, these photos reveal a rapidly changing landscape: the once-rural Manhattan north of 59th Street giving way to urban development.