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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDeath, Destruction, And Debt: 41 Photos Of Life In 1970s New York
Reeling from a decade of social turmoil, in the 1970s New York fell into a deep tailspin provoked by the flight of the middle class to the suburbs and a nationwide economic recession that hit New Yorks industrial sector especially hard.
Combined with substantial cuts in law enforcement and citywide unemployment topping ten percent, crime and financial crisis became the dominant themes of the decade. In just five years from 1969 to 1974, the city lost over 500,000 manufacturing jobs, which resulted in over one million households being dependent on welfare by 1975. In almost the same span, rapes and burglaries tripled, car thefts and felony assaults doubled, and murders went from 681 to 1690 a year.
Depopulation and arson also had pronounced effects on the city: Abandoned blocks dotted the landscape, creating vast areas absent of urban cohesion and life itself. Today, we look at 41 poignant photos that capture a New York City on the brink of implosion:
Now home to luxury loft apartments and media agencies, the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO was largely uninhabited for most of the 1970s
Once the borough of choice for the middle class, the Bronx bore the full brunt of 1970s white flight. Over the course of the decade, the Bronx lost over 30 percent of its population.
New York City became the capital of adult stores with Times Square as its epicenter.
While the towers grew, much of the city burned. Landlords who could no longer afford to maintain their buildings would occasionally burn them down to collect insurance money
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/1970s-new-york-photos?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fbpdnyc1970s
SCantiGOP
(13,875 posts)Last edited Thu May 12, 2016, 04:57 PM - Edit history (1)
As late as the late 80's Times Square was basically a cesspool. Blocks of nothing but sex-oriented businesses, that were so seedy there was nothing sexy about them. You felt like you were being exposed to STDs walking down the sidewalk.
I was there last summer, and there is not a trace of that now. I think that is for two reasons: the city government (even have to give the odious Giuliani a bit of credit) went after them, and a NYC judge ruled in the early 90s that sexual meetings on private property between consenting adults couldn't be regulated by the City, even it they were commercial in nature. So now there are ads in a lot of places that offer private meetings, and independent web sites to rate and evaluate the offer, so there is no reason for the activity to be on the street anymore.
FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)Times Square was as you described it. I hear people now complaining is like Disney and long for the "gritty olden days", but not me. Maybe it's a bit too Disney Main Blvd at times but I'd take that over what it was.
moonscape
(4,676 posts)young wide-eyed woman from the South, my first job out of university.
I loved it! I went to the theater a lot, and yes took cabs home, would not walk around TS at night. But during the day it was bustling, little local gyro shops, etc. I'm one who preferred that to the homogenized thing it is today. It's not as if what was there no longer exists, it just moved out of view of tourists and the theater crowd ...
Was burglarized 2x, but oddly it was just life and I never felt unsafe. Used precaution, but still took subways late at night from Chelsea to Upper West Side, and came into life there as an innocent, not street-wise.
Wouldn't trade my 70's life there for anything.
FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)A wide-eyed southern boy.
I really explored that city. I was single, young, living in a corporate apartment, and had an expense account. I too wouldn't trade that time for anything.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)NYC was by that measure alone a far better place to live in the 1970s. Also, it wasn't a total police state until Guiliani turned the NYPD into the Black Shirt guardians of Wall Street. I know, because I worked at the NYSE. Oh yes, the rich were a lot poorer then - the Dow Jones average stood at 850 points.
moonscape
(4,676 posts)at 69th and Broadway. It was a real community: local hardware, little restaurants, artsy theater. Philharmonic in the Park for free. Off-broadway for basically free. Dizzy Gillespie nearly free in the Village - little jazz clubs. Entertainment was deep, cultural and cheap if you wanted to take advantage of it.
It was possible to live pretty well on little if you were young and didn't need orchestra seats and penthouses and a car
JHB
(37,163 posts)...it wasn't the "free market" that changed it, it was government regulation.
When developers had projects in the 90s, they didn't want them intermingled with the sleaze shops. But the shops were able to afford higher rents than cleaner businesses. The "free market" thing to do would be to buy out their leases, but the developers didn't want to pay that much to sleaze merchants.
The solution? Regulate them out of business.
Giuliani got the zoning changed to expand he "No adult-entertainment businesses within X distance of a school or church" zones so that they covered all but a few spots. A lot of shops tried to technically comply by having a from business and relegating he adult stuff to a small section. Most of those weren't able to generate the revenue they needed, and the few that did got "inspected" often enough to scare off the customers that were still coming in.
Voila! It cleared them out, but it's a tale to tell to various fans of "the magic of the free market". T'wern't them that done it.
Laf.La.Dem.
(2,947 posts)Wish they had pictures of the same locations as of today.
FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)Laf.La.Dem.
(2,947 posts)roguevalley
(40,656 posts)and gas lines and you name it.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Skittles
(153,261 posts)there was a lot of good music in the 70's but gawd how I detested disco
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Skittles
(153,261 posts)LOVED Led Zeppelin from the first time I heard them
MindPilot
(12,693 posts)When I was a kid in England, that was THE station. I used to lay awake at night listening to them. I figured out how to take apart the old tube radio and connect one of those little what we would call earbuds today, and I could listen with no risk of my parents finding out i was listening to "rock and roll". Apparently that really used to piss Jesus off something fierce.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)enough to want to listen to antiwar programming and Simon & Garfunkel. The music and the politics were both mind expanding in the '70s.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)leveymg
(36,418 posts)That isn't exactly original but has been true for at least 5000 years.
Skittles
(153,261 posts)I picked RC up good, and they didn't mind me listening to rock 'n roll, although grandma did call the long-hairs "bloody riff raff"
IcyPeas
(21,931 posts)I lived in the UK for a while in '71 and remember listening to Radio Caroline at night. Also Radio Luxembourg.
Skittles
(153,261 posts)yeah, '71 - I remember it well
Boudica the Lyoness
(2,899 posts)moonbabygo
(281 posts)Nixon was gone in 72 or 73 don't remember
Beausoleil
(2,860 posts)He was in office until Aug 74.
The 1979 energy crisis was towards the end of Carter's term.
moonbabygo
(281 posts)but don't let that get in your way.
However is was President Carter in 1979 that waived most of the controls on oil and gas prices to make more fuel available.
I remember the odd even days and I remember gas stations turning me away as their gas was for their customers.
fun times
eShirl
(18,506 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)including the birth of rap.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080761/
http://vimeo.com/34429641
Disclaimer: The filmmaker is an old friend. In fact, he interviewed me for one of his other docos.
Stuckinthebush
(10,847 posts)Skittles
(153,261 posts)I was thinking, those guys do not look very tough
Stuckinthebush
(10,847 posts)It's a classic.
Skittles
(153,261 posts)Stuckinthebush
(10,847 posts)Watch the Warriors.
jmowreader
(50,580 posts)I know that, because I can count!
Stuckinthebush
(10,847 posts)He had such a short stay in the film.
Iggo
(47,586 posts)Can you dig it!
Norrin Radd
(4,959 posts)gentrifying hipsters.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Obviously Manhattan has been transformed into a playground for the very wealthy, and "affordable" Brooklyn ain't so affordable anymore, but how about the Bronx? Are those blocks and blocks of burned out buildings still around? It seems like that real estate would be snapped up and transformed, given its proximity to Manhattan.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Sorry. The middle class is dead in the metropolitan area.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)I was just curious if the Bronx was being torn down and rebuilt like so much of the rest of the city.
Philly-Union-Man
(79 posts)I think it's far more sleazy now than it ever was.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)It's not Fun City.
Warpy
(111,417 posts)was completely devalued and left unmaintained or abandoned or destroyed outright.
I remember driving the Cross Bronx Expressway in the early to mid 70s. I thought that was what Dresden must have looked like after the firestorm, building after building a skeleton of just a few fire blackened walls, the ones still standing shells of smoke stained walls and windows with no glass.
FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)I agree, people just used up the city without a care.
Aristus
(66,509 posts)It's a '57 Fury, not a '58, but still...
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)What a different world it is now!
bullwinkle428
(20,631 posts)FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)melman
(7,681 posts)alarimer
(16,245 posts)I listened to episode three this morning, about East New York and white flight, which turned out to be deliberately engineered on the part of real estate interests and the government. It was so much more than just racist white people fleeing the "dangerous" (actually much of the danger was trumped-up, so to speak).
Anyway, I might listen to the rest later on.
Forgot the link:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/neighborhood/
taught_me_patience
(5,477 posts)LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)I think there are more than merely two implicit options to choose from.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)because it is no longer affordable - they might.
Whenever I hear the word gentrification I want to know where the original inhabitants are now?
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)showed up at their apartment door and said they needed to use their window.
Boudica the Lyoness
(2,899 posts)Street walkers and porn in Times Sq. Did not dare enter the subway. No tourists to be seen. No lines to go up the Empire State bldg.
Horrible place.