A new sample containing rental price and characteristic data for over 15,000 New York City units was collected from historical newspapers for the period 1880 to 1910. These units were geolocated to the historical map of Manhattan Island to explore their geographic coverage, using Geographic...

Historical inequality is difficult to measure, especially at the sub-country level and beyond the top income shares. This paper presents new evidence on the level of inequality in Manhattan from 1880 to 1910 using housing rents. Rental prices and characteristics, including geocodable locations,...

We construct the first consistent market rent and home sales price series for American cities across the 20th century using millions of newspaper real estate listings. Our findings revise several stylized facts about U.S. housing markets. Real market rents did not fall during the 20th century...