Emily Thompson

We love looking at footage from 1920s New York City and watching the bustling street life from a bygone era, but we aren't nearly as familiar with its sounds. The Roaring Twenties, "an interactive exploration of the historical soundscape of New York City," created by historian Emily Thompson, compiles a wealth of historic data to re-create and share the city's sonic history, giving context to the sounds of the city in the 1920s and '30s. In an introduction, there’s a quote from a 1920 New York Times article that speaks of how the city was “defined by its din."
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