Ben Fractenberg

For many, 2021 began with renewed hope as the vaccination campaign ramped up and the city slowly reopened. The surging Delta variant, and later, Omicron, complicated the effort.

For many, 2021 began with renewed hope as the vaccination campaign ramped up and the city slowly reopened. The surging Delta variant, and later, Omicron, complicated the effort.

The Canyon of Heroes march from the Battery to City Hall honored health care workers, transit workers, food deliverers and other essential workers who kept the city going during the pandemic. It marked New York’s first ticker-tape salute since 2019.

The Department of Correction stopped visitation last spring at the beginning of the pandemic. Now family and friends of detainees are returning under a new system.

After documenting the Manhattan Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management’s door-to-door graduation in 2020, THE CITY returned this year to see the high school’s in-person, yet still socially distanced, revelry.

Check out views from the trail after months of campaigning in a primary made historic by the pandemic and the impending citywide debut of ranked choice voting.

For the first time in nearly a year, much of the city was eerily quiet for reasons other than solely the pandemic.

People flocked to parks, boardwalks and outdoor dining as the city endured its first heat wave of the pandemic.

Smashed windows and demands for justice in the death of George Floyd dotted the shopping mecca.

Unrefrigerated U-Hauls and Ryders haul corpses in East Harlem and elsewhere — signs of a traffic jam on the way to COVID victims’ final resting place.