What New York lacked in crowds, it made up for in hope.
As the city reflected on a year it would love to forget the turn of the new year was marked with grief and grace.
The city prides itself in throwing the biggest New Year s Eve party on the planet - the world invited - but the message this year was to stay away.
More than a million people stretched almost 20 blocks around Times Square last New Year s Eve. This year just a few hundred people attended the famous ball drop by special invitation - many of them frontline workers.