Lyon in Lower Manhattan

 

When Danny Lyon was born in Brooklyn in 1942, nearby neighborhoods in downtown Manhattan

were on the precipice of massive postwar economic growth. Lyon grew up in Queens and then attended the University of Chicago, where he worked as a staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“Danny Lyon”). After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in history, Lyon joined the Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club, taking photographs of his fellow riders as they traveled. This project marks the beginning of Lyon’s career-long engagement with the New Journalism movement, which told stories from the perspective of their subjects. By embedding himself into his subjects’ lives, Lyon removed scrutiny and judgment from his relationships with subjects, generating honest, sympathetic photographs that communicated his human character.

 

Lyon moved back to New York City in 1967 but soon learned that his downtown Manhattan neighborhood was scheduled for demolition. The condemned sixty-acre block below Canal Street had once bustled with production and trading in the leather, printing, lithography, and produce industries, but after World War II, the area mainly contained boarded up buildings and loft residences (Campbell). Believing that the land would be more valuable as civic and corporate space, developers arranged an urban renewal project, with a ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge in the East and the World Trade Center in the West (Sholis 97).

 

At this time, the United States was several years into a period of economic growth fueled by tax cuts and post-World-War-II infrastructure investments. Income inequality had also risen, though, with twenty percent of Americans classified as poor (“War on Poverty”). This led President Lyndon B. Johnson to spearhead a reformist agenda called the “Great Society,” which provided aid to municipalities to revitalize “blighted” areas (“Thematic Window”). Like many urban renewal projects across the United States, the development of Lower Manhattan was designed to uplift “down and out, dark, and dangerous” neighborhoods with profitable buildings that attract wealthier populations (Fernandez 6). In her landmark book, The Life and Death of Great American Cities (1961), activist Jane Jacobs argues that this method of displacing constructive communities instead of encouraging them fails to ameliorate hardship for existing residents. In his series The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, Lyon goes one step further by highlighting the loss, not just lack of gain, felt by displaced residents of the Lower East Side.

 

Challenging developers’ economic definition of Lower Manhattan as a blighted space, Lyon saw historical value in the condemned buildings, as some predated the American Civil War. He acquired funding from the New York State Council on the Arts and began photographing demolition sites, often capturing these “fossils of a time past” just days before their erasure. The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, blended architectural and human subjects to narrate the transient relationship between departing residents, demolition workers (whom Lyon called “housewreckers”), and the buildings (“The Planning Debate”; Campbell). Once again engaging directly with his subject matter, Lyon portrayed the convergence of history and ephemerality experienced by urban communities.

 

Signs of “Blight”

 

“Abandoned Artist’s Loft, 48 Ferry Street” (1967) provides a personal view of the neighborhood’s demolition, depicting a high-ceilinged room which is empty of people but smattered with signs of its departed residents. In the foreground, a white half wall displaying three sketched portraits separates a small, cluttered kitchen from the rest of the room. Behind the kitchen, a large, multi-paned window casts soft, bright light onto a water-stained, white wall and rough, hardwood floor. The delicate portraits contrast the disarray of the abandoned loft, conveying Lyon’s poignant argument that the social and economic development of Lower Manhattan has not simply filled an empty space but has destroyed a historic and dynamic community.

 

This photograph looks toward a far corner of the Artist’s loft, encompassing a large space in its careful composition. A white half wall dominates the foreground, stretching out of the right edge of the photograph, back into the center of the room. The half wall supports a dark countertop which appears old and hastily constructed, with gaps between the wall and countertop. The wall is speckled with smudges of dirt and drawing medium, dark scuff marks, and spots of mold. The condition of the half wall is impossible to ignore in Lyon’s frame, and it clearly communicates that maintenance was not or could not be prioritized in this space. Developers addressed the neighborhoods postwar economic decline by replacing, not refurbishing, buildings, demonstrating urban scholars’ finding that economic growth often fails to preserve the usefulness of a space for the majority of low-income inhabitants (Logan and Molotch 98).

 

American Studies research on New York City neighborhoods suggests that working-class residents, cultural and commercial infrastructure, and historical built environment gave Lower Manhattan economic potential in the eyes of urban planners and companies (Chronopoulos 294). The attractiveness of urban renewal overwhelmed the existing value of the neighborhood in terms of financial productivity, given that its industry and infrastructure had not been reinvigorated since post-WWII economic decline. Smaller signs of structural disrepair throughout the artist’s loft indicate that the landlord could not afford frequent repairs or did not consider investment in upkeep valuable long-term. Focusing on longstanding financial and physical inadequacies makes urban renewal seem a rational, even positive, response to the condition of Lower Manhattan.

 

Urban scholars state that “gentrification actually goes beyond displacement and includes the replacement and exclusion of certain populations from a neighborhood” (Chronopoulos 296). To justify this replacement, developers appeal to the common good, measuring the benefits of transportation infrastructure and corporate spaces against the less visible good of small communities. By defining this urban development project as The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, Lyon argues that planned replacements will not adequately compensate for the displacement of vibrant individual lives and rich communities. He shows that the demolition project did not uplift a “blighted” vacancy but rather erased its existing value.

 

Individuality Before Erasure

 

The farther, left end of the half wall holds a rectangular wooden pillar coated in chipped white paint, which extends out of the top of the photograph. A metal box, possibly a thermostat, sits two-thirds of the way up the pillar. The artist has drawn curling ornamentation around the box, mimicking metal frames or wood carving found in more opulent spaces. The clear signs of use but lack of human subjects give the loft a still, quiet, abandoned appearance.

 

Most intriguing are two portraits sketched onto the half wall. The portrait on the left is half the height of the wall and clearly depicts the thin face and shoulders of a figure with short hair and dark eyes. The portrait on the right is larger, vertically spanning almost the whole half wall. It depicts a broader face with large eyes and a mustache. The artist framed this face with two ghost-like faces defined by curved lines instead of detailed features. A white, rectangular piece of cloth with a third portrait lies on the worn hardwood floor directly in front of the half wall, in the bottom left corner of the image. Loosely fastened staples along the top of the cloth suggests that it was once hung on a wall, furthering the idea that the artist once integrated their work into the loft but has since had to abandon the space due to urban development construction. These sketches are the centerpiece of the photograph, imbuing the space with the identities of its inhabitants and marking it as an “Artist’s Loft.”

 

The different faces drawn in close proximity, in a similar style evoke a sense of community, leading the viewer to imagine the artist and subjects in the space themselves as the portraits were done. Physical evidence of previous inhabitants conveys absence, not emptiness, illustrating Lyon’s perspective that Lower Manhattan was losing its identity. Urban sociologists assert that elites use a “growth consensus to eliminate any alternative vision of the purpose of local government or the meaning of community” (Logan and Molotch 51). Lyon provides that alternative vision through photographs, a vision of historic buildings that may have kept standing and people who may have kept working and living in them. His dissent shows that gain requires loss and that growth does not always serve the whole city, particularly excluding marginalized communities from the benefits.

 

Group Identity Persisting

 

The words “Latin Hustlers Warrior” are scrawled down the half wall just to the left of this drawing. The letter “L” with “HU” just below it is visible on the wall above the stove, presumably another “Latin Hustlers Warrior” mark running out of frame. This phrase reflects multiple marginalized communities living and working in Lower Manhattan at the time the neighborhood was condemned. According to New York’s Department of City Planning, the city’s Hispanic population increased from 733,000 in 1960 to 1,279,000 in 1970 with an even greater increase in concentration in the Lower East Side (“Hispanic population” 6-8). Although the Hispanic population of this area continued to grow after World Trade Center and Brooklyn Bridge projects began, demolition disrupted a burgeoning community.

 

At the time of the photograph, “Hustlers” was commonly used to refer to male prostitutes but had a broader, more flexible use in the gay community. While this term had a negative connotation in 1960s American public life, the unknown writer identified as a “hustler” strongly enough to write it repeatedly in a space. Like the drawings on the wall, “Latin Hustlers Warrior” represents a clearly defined personal identity, and the imminent demolition of the artist’s loft symbolizes a destruction of Lower East Side communities based on these identities.

 

These two identities may converge in the title, “Warrior.” Lyon’s photograph does not reveal who etched their community-based identifier on the walls of the artist’s loft, but the series’ narrative that existing communities lay in opposition to the development project paints the “Warrior” as defending themselves from institutional or cultural limitations. “Latin Hustlers Warrior” likely represents a group identity found in the neighborhood, developing Lyon’s message that Lower Manhattan was not empty despite its industry having declined. Lyon’s neighborhood still held various rich communities, and the photographer ensured that their existence was preserved after their spaces were abandoned.

 

Liminal Abandonment before Destruction

 

A crumpled piece of paper, two empty glass bottles, one Coca Cola and one Canada Dry, and a short plank of wood with nail holes have been left on the rickety countertop. The loft’s kitchen space is wedged behind the half wall. The stove and a pan left on top of it are just visible over the edge of the counter. One dial is turned on, suggesting that someone attempted to use the fuel after it was disconnected for demolition. The refrigerator, which stands directly to the left of the stove, has been pulled away from the wall and turned away from the kitchen and the camera; the smudged door has been left open. The scattered objects give the impression that the loft’s resident, the artist, left suddenly, not in a planned move, but out of necessity.

 

Lyon juxtaposes the disarray left by the resident artist’s rushed departure with the deliberate, intimate portraits to emphasize that urban renewal in Lower Manhattan expelled constructive communities instead of enriching or reconstructing them. By showing the loft between abandonment and destruction, the photograph conveys the experience of displaced residents that is not highlighted in images taken long before or long after urban renewal. Urban scholars claim that, along with severing of historical roots, fear of displacement dominates residents’ sentiments toward gentrification, outlining a painful narrative that starkly differs from developers’ optimistic promises of opportunity (Freeman 59). The forced abandonment of Lower Manhattan buildings removed the Artist from new financial growth and transportation infrastructure as well as their existing communities. Lyon offers a mournful view of a human experience that has already been displaced, adding another layer of loss to physical displacement.

 

Conclusion: A Complete View

 

Beyond the kitchen alcove, two walls make up the background, visually divided by a wooden pillar. On the left, a smooth, white wall stretches up to the loft’s high ceiling and out of frame. Water stains and horizontal lines of discoloration show its age and suggest that the tenant did not or could not repaint frequently. Nail holes run in a straight, horizontal line across the wall, possibly from artwork that has been taken down. A large rectangular piece of plywood, about the height of the counter, leans against the white wall; it also shows discoloration and water damage. To the right of the pillar is a brick wall painted white with a large window in its center. There are scuffs in the white paint, and one of the window panes has been covered with cardboard or plywood, suggesting that it was broken but could not be replaced. The window casts soft, bright light over the room, showing that broken glass, chipped paint, and other debris are scattered across the floor panels.

 

Taken as a whole, the “Abandoned Artist’s Loft” conveys the complex condition of Lower Manhattan immediately before urban renewal. Visible markers of economic struggle and disrepair, such as water stains and splintering wood panels, present developers’ perception of the condemned sixty acres as blighted, having no future without intervention. These markers are overpowered, though, by remnants of individuality, community, and humanity. Lyon identifies the unknown resident as an Artist, emphasizing through the sketched portraits that inhabitants once improved their own quality of life with the same creativity and productivity that developers aimed to bring into the neighborhood. Empty and white, the background starkly contrasts these signs of life, highlighting the quiet loss that comes with forced abandonment.