The Flickr Forgottenneighborhoods Image Generatr

Michigan US, Jun 2011 by dropthepeg

There / Not There (Google Street View project): www.instagram.com/dropthepeg/

Need tires? Here's a place that sells inexpensive used ones. The smokestacks of an abandoned power plant in the background. New Haven, Connecticut. by WAVZ 13

This shot was taken in the Fair Haven neighborhood near the Mill River and the abandoned United Illuminating power plant. Some of these tires have seen vastly better days!

A forlorn side street in Binghamton, New York. Once a manufacturing city, today it's seen better times. July 2012. by WAVZ 13

Although a small city in upstate New York, it's a great example of what happens when its major sources of employment leave or close up shop. This street is representative of many neighborhoods in Binghamton. This is looking down North Broad Street from Main Street.

By the mid 1960s, vast swaths of Manhattan's Lower West Side were abandoned and decrepit. Once bustling with busy piers, wholesalers and stores, all that was left were shuttered fossils from the past. West and Chambers Streets. New York. 1966. by WAVZ 13

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.

Just the right moment in late afternoon when the cold November sunlight momentarily illuminates an old abandoned 19th century factory's wooden cornice and its windows boarded up with green wood. by WAVZ 13

Another shot taken with my Pentax Auto 110. For about 2 years, I was fascinated with that camera and its capabilities using tiny 110 film. Bridgeport Connecticut. Nov 2005

Just another Saturday late afternoon in Bridgeport, Connecticut's south side a few blocks away from Seaside Park. A giant United Illuminating smokestack hovers over a partially abandoned neighborhood. November 2005. by WAVZ 13

Another shot taken with my Pentax Auto 110. For about 2 years, I was fascinated with that camera and its capabilities using tiny 110 film.

Greetings from New Haven, CT. A city of culture - Yale University, The Beinecke Rare Book Library, The Peabody Museum, The Yale Art Gallery, The Ely Center for Contemporary Art, The Kline Geology Laboratory, The Shubert Theater... and so much more! by WAVZ 13

Oh yes, also the lovely Mill River with various scrapyards and the abandoned United Illuminating power plant. Closed in 1992, nobody knows quite what to do with it. Another view of the city below...

A slightly different perspective of 1970s Lower Manhattan on a gray rainy day. Standing at the corner of West Street looking down the battered 19th century cobblestones and urban jungle of Reade Street to Greenwich Street. New York. June 1974. by WAVZ 13

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.

Meanwhile, back to the old version of Jersey City. Here, we're standing near the end of the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad's 6th Street Embankment looking to the skyline of Lower Manhattan. Once a busy place, by 1977, it was a total no-man's land. by WAVZ 13

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...<

Mom drinks coffee on our porch while the neighborhood becomes progressively weedier. The owner of the lot across Rock Street died and nobody was mowing it anymore. In the background, the Surf Club parking lot reverted to a swamp 5 years after bankruptcy. by WAVZ 13

Taken with my late, great Nikon FG 35mm camera on Kodacolor film.

The neighborhood by Rock Street and Merwin Avenue in Milford Connecticut sure was changing in 1986! All this available property inevitably resulted in an endless array of condo and townhouse developments starting about a year after this photo was taken.

I've added two photos below of the same place in earlier times.

Yet more fun just strolling around in malaise-era Manhattan. The gargantuan hulking abandoned West Side Highway added a dystopian touch of light and shadow to what passed for life on cobblestoned West Street below. March 1974. by WAVZ 13

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...."

New Haven had a robust industrial history in the 19th century which included corsets, clocks, cotton-gins, horse carriages and Winchester Arms guns. Forgotten are the tobacco storage and curing buildings which used to stand on State Street. Aug 1975. by WAVZ 13

By the time I discovered them as an adventurous teen in the mid 1970s, all of these buildings were abandoned and in a state of disarray.

From what I've read, during its height, most of this tobacco was home-grown in upstate Connecticut farms during the summer, then shipped down by railroad to New Haven to cure in these 19th century buildings until it was ready to shred into little pieces and mechanically rolled into cigar rolling paper for sale in local stores. These were the quintessential 5 and 10 cent cigars that gentlemen kept in their suit pockets.

I feel lucky to have to captured this and other end-of-industry views before the brick buildings were torn down in the name of urban renewal sometime in the late '70s or early 1980s.

Rusting abandoned industrial gas tank and old brick 19th century factories. A stand of twisted junk trees breathing in leaded gasoline exhaust hovering over the Connecticut Turnpike from which this view was taken. Bridgeport. June 1972. by WAVZ 13

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.)

Like a time machine returning you to multicolored art deco neon signs, lights and shadows on Cortland Street, a portion of the city's Radio Row. A wisp of unspoken mystery prevails. New York. 1937. by WAVZ 13

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....

A little boy and girl play in an empty littered lot between tenements and a tire repair shack on the right. Clothes hang on lines to dry. Jersey Avenue near 12th Street. Jersey City. 1929 by WAVZ 13

This forgotten slice of daily life is actually a small part of the two larger photos below showing the intersection of Jersey Avenue and 12th Street. It's the same car parked in all three images.

Welcome to the Field of Dreams. Scavenging through trash in the toxic blasted lands underneath the Pulaski Skyway. Jersey City. March 1975 by WAVZ 13

Places no more. An old neighborhood which is only a memory now. Developers bought about five acres in 1986 and built large modern pink cubist waterfront condominium towers near the Hudson River. Nyack New York. Aug 1984. by WAVZ 13

My favorite aspect is the long-abandoned Esso gasoline station which once served the community decades before this photo was taken. Now it was being taken over by "ghetto palms", the very invasive Ailanthus trees.

Places no more. An old neighborhood which is only a memory now. Developers bought about five acres in 1986 and built large modern pink cubist waterfront condominium towers near the Hudson River. Nyack New York. March 1984. by WAVZ 13

My favorite aspect is the long-abandoned Esso gasoline station which once served the community decades before this photo was taken. Nyack was the first town I explored after moving to Rockland County back in late 1983.