Fifth Avenue, now one of the most expensive shopping streets in the entire world, was once a street like any other – made of dirt and full of people just trying to get by.

This pic snapped by the legend, Alfred Stieglitz is in the Big Apple if you didn’t already know that. But because the artist wasn’t kind enough to give us the cross street, it could be anywhere from Harlem to Washington Square Park. Not one for directions that Alfred. We do however know what time of year this is because it’s snowing which means it’s winter, which also means that poor horse is about to die from exposure. Why isn’t anyone thinking about these poor horses stuck out in the snow? This must be the Upper East Side because of the snobbery but that information is derived entirely from my high school viewing of the show Gossip Girl.

This street doesn’t look like much but in about 100 years, the rent for a place on this street will be up to $1,850 per square foot. Only the best brands – Bottega Veneta, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Hollister (wait, what?) – make it to this location. A store on this street is highly sought after and incredibly competitive to get. Did Stieglitz anticipate the rapidly changing environment that he was standing in at the very moment that he took this picture or was he just fascinated by all the cute lil’ horses? We’d give Stieglitz the benefit of the doubt since he was the one who turned photography into a fine art rather than just a novelty activity… and also because he was married to one of our favorite ladies in all of art history. On second thought, it’s mostly because he was married to Georgia O’Keeffe.