Lyon, Danny.

The destruction of lower Manhattan / photographs and text by Danny Lyon.

1st rev. ed.

New York : Powerhouse Books, 2005.

73 leaves of plates : chiefly illustrations ; 28 cm

In late 1966, Danny Lyon returned to New York City, having just finishedThe Bikeriders. He was twenty-five. Living in a loft on the corner of Beekman and William Streets in Downtown Manhattan, Lyon saw that half the buildings on Beekman Street were boarded up, about to be demolished. That year an incredible sixty acres of mostly nineteenth-century buildings were slated for demolition, all below Canal Street. The seven-acre site where the Twin Towers would eventually stand was being cleared, a new ramp added to the Brooklyn Bridge, Pace University expanded, and the Washington Market was being moved to the Bronx. Whole sections of Lower Manhattan were being turned into rubble. Lyon thought of the titleThe Destruction of Lower Manhattanfirst, and then made a record of each building before it was demolished. The book was released by Macmillan Publishers in 1969, and remaindered a few years later; the copies sold for one dollar each. It has been a collector's item ever since. Thirty-eight years after these photographs were made, many of them are the only record that survives of entire blocks that once lined Fulton Street, and West Street along the Hudson. Because of the disaster that would strike the city a generation later, New Yorkers have taken on a renewed and fervent interest in the architecture of their city. This work is a major contribution to that new world. For Lyon, these buildings in their last days standing were the embodiment of a beauty and pathos that people walking by in the street seldom noticed at the time. Those feelings were preserved in the photographs that today survive exactly as the young author intended, as a memory and a record of what was.

1576872327 (clothbond)
9781576872321 (clothbond)

Lyon, Danny, 1942-
Wrecking New York (State) New York Pictorial works.
Démolition New York (État) New York Ouvrages illustrés.
Buildings
Wrecking
Fotografi Förenta staterna 1960-talet.
Fotografer Förenta staterna 1960-talet.
Fotokonst Förenta staterna 1960-talet.
New York (N.Y.) Pictorial works.
New York (N.Y.) Buildings, structures, etc. Pictorial works.
Manhattan (New York, N.Y.) Pictorial works.
Manhattan (New York, N.Y.) Buildings, structures, etc. Pictorial works.
New York (State) New York
New York (State) New York Manhattan
New York 1960-talet bildverk.
Manhattan bildverk.

illustrated books.
Illustrated works
Ouvrages illustrés.

Location: Library main 242226
Call No.: BIB 172026
Status: Available