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For those of you into the 30s cars here is a video of a New York street scene with lots of the older cars going along their merry way. I believe there is even a Packard or two but am not up enough on cars of that era to know exactly in what part of the 30s it was taken.
youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXvlmUd0Y0

Very neat video, Howard, pretty hi-res for the 30's too! I definitely saw at least a couple of Packards in there. Boy, jay-walking sure wasn't uncommon back then, eh? - seemed more the norm than crosswalks. Chris.

Very good quality! As for dating it, these Checker Model Y cabs are throughout and appeared circa 1938 and I also spotted a very late Pierce-Arrow along with several other cars with headlights in the fenders so likely very late ‘30s.

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Quite true. Originally everyone shared the street, pedestrians would yield to vehicles (horse drawn carriages) and vice versa, as convenience and direction allowed. Obviously with cars, faster cars, and fewer pedestrians, pedestrian accidents rose. There was a good amount of lobbying from friends of the automobile to introduce jaywalking laws, shifting blame to pedestrians for intruding in the cars' space, rather than cars going at unsafe speeds near pedestrians.

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And it looks like jaywalking is coming back full circle. Some states, California being one of them, have passed bills that will make some mid block jaywalking legal again. Overall, unless someone does something patently stupid causing an accident California's law makes ticketing jaywalkers less of a priority for law enforcement.

Definitely late '30s. I saw some '37s and later. Nothing '39 or '40. One or two with headlights on the fender which is circa '38ish. I didn't spot any "P"s but only ran it once. All the pre-war would have the "coffin top" hood/bonnet design.
Someone is spending a lot of time, saving these old films. I don't know the editing tech but it's pretty amazing. Once digitized I guess then can do practically anything to it, but then how do you know it's authentic?
Civilizations ran smoother when gentlemen wore hats...

Nice video, thanks. Love this stuff. Our cars being cars.

I lived in greater NYC 1965-70, spent much time in Manhattan and the traffic, congestion there then was less than here in the SF East Bay area, my city of a mere 74,000 today. I kid you not.

It's swell to visit the past, but not at the exclusion of confronting the present. Many of us rebuilt old cars to enjoy now and then without military planning or getting up at 5am weekends only to be back in the garage by 7am when the breeders are already racing to Star Bucks in their two-pedal whoa and go vehicles.

US city planners have long used 600 feet, the length of two short city blocks or pair of football fields without the endzones as the distance at which Americans instinctively reach for their car keys.

Most people walked, took ubiquitous street cars, trolley, interurbans, busses, subways, elevateds.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but ourselves."

US population when the above filmed 130 million. Today, 350 million. Global population 1938-39, 2.2 billion.
Today, 8.1 billion.

The world's scientists agree this is our most pressing problem, but i guess that's "politics," so heads back in the sand.

Nice five-minute diversion from reality. I hark to Vivaldi, Chopin, Armstrong, Bechet and my Packard, but do not want to live in 1730, 1840, 1947.

So....short of moving to South Dakota or West Virginia, what do we do to ensure a future in which we can still enjoy our Packards now and then instead of living online?

This was a very enjoyable clip. Thanks for posting it.

Someone famous once said: "The past is a different place, they do things differently there."

Someone posted that these filmed street scenes were made for background screening for future movies. Like when a couple is in a car and scenery is shown moving outside of the windows giving the feeling of the car traveling on the street or road.

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And that could explain the quality although the description at the start of the video said it had been restored so they could have done something there too.

As to street scenes, there was an episode of the old Burns and Allen show from the early 50s shown again not long ago on the Antenna TV channel where almost the entire episode was staged in the back of a cab. The scene mostly consisted of a long conversation between Gracie and Blanche discussing how Gracie would carry out one of her hair brained ideas -- and keep George from finding out.

The LA freeway scene was obviously filmed for background and must have been fairly short because it was repeated. It could have even had some studio drivers under direction driving some of the cars. The same few cars including a 53 Packard kept appearing thru the back and side rear window as well as Gracie's favorite department store before it was merged with another chain and changed names. The Packard was first on one side, then directly behind the cab and then you would see a glimpse of it on the other side of the car and a few minutes later you know the sequence repeated because the May Co department store was in view again.