New Municipal Archive Photo Site Collapses Under Demand

Tuesday morning, the Department of City Records lifted the veil on roughly 870,000 photos of Manhattan dating as far back as the mid-1800s. A project over four years in the making, this new database is populated by a collection culled from the Municipal Archives.

Photo Credit: Municipal Archives

Most of the images were taken by anonymous municipal workers. Too bad nobody can access anything. Overwhelming demand has completely crippled the government website. Up until yesterday, loading the page would result in a 404-error page. #FAIL. Now the site carries the following announcement:

Due to overwhelming demand, the New York City Municipal Archives Online Gallery is unavailable at present. Maintenance activities are underway to address this issue.

Consider yourself lucky if you got through. Wave goodbye to productivity once it’s live.

[via MSNBC]