The Destruction of Lower Manhattan

A reissue of this now classic book of photographs that documents the demise of building in and around the lower portion of Manhattan. The Destruction of Lower Manhattan by radical documentary photographer Danny Lyon is the only volume to witness the demolition of an historic section of New York City razed in the late 60s to make way for the construction of the World Trade Center. Thirty-eight years after these photographs were made, many of them are the only record that survives of entire blocks of mainly nineteenth century buildings 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.