I was a teenager in Texas during all of it, so I missed out on the New York City of the 1970s. It was a very different place than where I live today. The Bowery, now lined with million dollar apartments, lived up to it’s infamous name by hosting much of the city’s illicit activities. Dealers and hookers worked pretty openly in the now-santitized Times Square. Mid-decade the city went through a HUGE final crisis, much like Detroit has been experiencing lately. In ’77, a city-wide blackout plunged Gotham into chaos after the power went out for a full 24 hours. By the end of the decade, the city saw 1,814 homicides, three times what it is today — while the population declined to just over 7 million, down a million from the previous decade. Today, on the face of it, people would LONG to return to a time when the city was cheaper, but these grim stats are a grim reminder that is was a tough town. Granted, there were exciting things happening too: Andy Warhol’s Factory, Saturday Night Live in their heyday, Studio 54 and CBGB‘s thrived in a climate of sexual freedom and wild creativity. But in these pictures, none of that good, or bad, is apparent. Just street life –like the great 70s anthem says:
Street life / You can run away from time / Street life / For a nickel, for a dime Street life / But you better not get old / Street life / Or you’re gonna feel the cold
Facing Southwest to Fourteenth Street from Third Avenue. Photo by Bill Ricco
42nd Street at Seventh Avenue, facing Northwest, 1970
14th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues, facing East, 1976. Photo by Eugene Gannon
Mulberry Street at Hester, facing North, 1975. Photo by Nick DeWolf
Eighth Avenue at 41st Street, facing Northeast, 1978. Photo by Tony Smull
Madison Avenue at 64th Street, facing South, 1979. Photo by Alan Benjamin
West End Avenue at 79th Street, facing North, 1979
Northeast corner of Delancey and Bowery, c.1978. Photo by Manel Armengol
68th and Broadway, facing Northeast, 1980
Lafayette Street at Bleecker, facing North, 1976. Screen grab from the film “Marathon Man”
Ninth Avenue at 56th Street, facing South, 1979
Sixth Avenue at 27th Street, 1978. Photo by Manel Armengol
Hell’s Kitchen, 1973. Photo by Paul Mones
Sixth Avenue facing South from 59th Street
Southwest corner of 74th and Broadway, the storefront was located inside the Ansonia. Early 1970s
July 4th, 1976 – Bicentennial celebration in New York Harbor. Photo by Steven Lindner
Northeast Corner of 14th Street at 7th Avenue, 1972. Photo by Lionel Martinez
Times Square night in 1970. Photo by James Wolcott
(via Vintage Everyday)