There / Not There (Google Street View project): www.instagram.com/dropthepeg/
This page simply reformats the Flickr public Atom feed for purposes of finding inspiration through random exploration. These images are not being copied or stored in any way by this website, nor are any links to them or any metadata about them. All images are © their owners unless otherwise specified.
This site is a busybee project and is supported by the generosity of viewers like you.
There / Not There (Google Street View project): www.instagram.com/dropthepeg/
If you're curious how this intersection appears now, here's a link...
www.google.com/maps/@40.7170279,-74.0127619,3a,75y,138.2h...
When the Port Authority opened Port Newark in 1956, a modern container port, it quickly antiquated the traditional waterfront shipping in NYC, leading to a steep decline in such areas as Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. This photo is a scan from the 1968 book "The Destruction of Lower Manhattan" by Danny Lyon.
Taken during one of my teen explorations of the area around the World Trade Center which was only two years old.
Two brick apartment buildings are painted to create interest in moving to the brand new high-rise series of apartment buildings called Independence Plaza North just a block to the left.
As part of an urban renewal project of the then-decrepit Lower West Side, ISP was meant to draw residents to live in what eventually would evolve into the TriBeCa neighborhood over decades.
A 1960s green and white 7up delivery truck appears in the background.
The original 110 film negative is lost to time, so this cropped and enhanced scan of the matte print is the only remaining capture of this moment.
Trees had already begun to grown on the embankment. These days, it has evolved into an urban forest.
To see the exact same view as it appears now on Google Street View, the link is below. The difference between 1977 and today are amazing!
www.google.com/maps/@40.7251361,-74.0411004,3a,75y,130.68...<
Taken near West 20th Street where Chelsea Piers exists today on the left of the image.
Believe it or not, this is what the entrance ramps were like when the highway was built in the 1920s. By the 1970s, they were ridiculously obsolete.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, vast swaths of New York
had a strong resemblance to what Detroit has become now.
Here's a quote from a great book about 1960s and '70s New York called "The Ungovernable City" by Vincent J Cannato...
"Stabbings, robberies, muggings, graffiti, arson and rape began to strike a wider and wider portion of the population. Burglaries made people feel vulnerable, even in their once-safe homes and apartments. It wasn't just the reality of crime and sense of broadening disorder that hurt. It was the raw fear and perception of vulnerability that seeped into every interaction of daily life...."
Shot from the passenger seat of my dad’s 1965 Pontiac Bonneville on a gray and rainy day, Bridgeport presented quite a bleak view back then. Unlike today, there were still vestiges of the highly industrialized city it once was until the mid 1960s.
Driving through Bridgeport on the Connecticut Turnpike always looked like the blasted lands to my 13 year old eyes. (and worthy of a few pictures on black and white grainy 126 film.)
Imagine some of the other things not visible... the sounds of footsteps on the littered sidewalk, the metallic scent of the subway below and its vintage trains illuminated by warm yellow incandescent bulbs. The noises and exhaust smell produced by the engines of 1920s and 30s automobiles as well as their high-pitched horns as they rattled along the dark city streets....