SF author William Gibson interviewed in The Paris Review…

“It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable. It would be harder to accurately imagine what New York City was like the day before the advent of broadcast television than to imagine what it will be like after life-size broadcast holography comes online. But actually the New York without the television is more mysterious, because we’ve already been there and nobody paid any attention. That world is gone.”

Actually… H.P. Lovecraft was there, he paid attention. So did Helen Levitt and many other artists and writers. There had also been a wave of recent academic books on many aspects of the culture and times of New York City in the 1910-1930 period.