"I came to see the buildings as fossils of a time past. These buildings were used during the Civil War. The men were all dead, but the buildings were still here, left behind as the city grew around them....The passing of buildings was for me a great event. It didn't matter so much whether they were of architectural importance. What mattered to me was that they were about to be destroyed. Whole blocks would disappear. An entire neighborhood. Its few last loft occupying tenants were being evicted, and no place like it would ...
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"I came to see the buildings as fossils of a time past. These buildings were used during the Civil War. The men were all dead, but the buildings were still here, left behind as the city grew around them....The passing of buildings was for me a great event. It didn't matter so much whether they were of architectural importance. What mattered to me was that they were about to be destroyed. Whole blocks would disappear. An entire neighborhood. Its few last loft occupying tenants were being evicted, and no place like it would ever be built again. The streets involved were among the oldest in New York and when sections of some were closed by the barriers of the demolition men, it meant they would never be opened again." --Danny Lyon In late 1966, Danny Lyon returned to New York City, having just finished "The 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 title "The Destruction of Lower Manhattan" first, 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.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in Fine jacket. This is a fine hardcover copy with a fine dust jacket with no wear at all. No fading to jacket. Completely clean. This is the first revised edition, first printing. 72 black & white photographs and text by Danny Lyon. 11" high X 9" wide. Heavy book, foreign shipping will be extra. This book will be securely wrapped and packed in a sturdy box and shipped with tracking.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Good+ dust jacket. Hardcover. 4to. Published by Macmillan Company, New York, 1969. Unpaginated. (8), (148) pgs. 73 stunning black-and-white plates. First Edition/First Printing. Spine label present to the spine, label present to the FFEP. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine and front board. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. After creating the series The Bikeriders and moving back to New York in 1966, Lyon settled into a downtown loft, becoming one of the few artists to document the dramatic changes taking place. Lyon writes, “Whole blocks would disappear. An entire neighborhood. Its few last loft occupying tenants were being evicted, and no place like it would ever be built again. ” Through his striking photographs and accompanying texts, Lyon paints a portrait of the people who lived there, of rooms with abandoned furniture, children's paintings, empty stairwells. Intermingled within the architecture are portraits of individuals and the dem¬olition workers who, despite their assigned task, emerge as the surviving heroes. Danny Lyon's documentation of doomed facades, empty interiors, work crews, and remaining dwellers still appeals to our emotions more than fifty years later, and Aperture's reissue retains the power of the original. EB; 10.6 X 9.2 X 0.6 inches.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good- jacket. 9 1/2" X 10 7/8" 75pgs. Black Cloth, silver lettering. Stated First printing. 75 full page black and white photographs. Toning to the extremities of the covers and the page edges, a crease on the half-title page and two thumb smudges on the title page. The unclipped pictorial jacket has a small chip on the upper spine superficial scratches of the laminate, mostly on the rear panel. in mylar sleeve. "Commissioned by the New York State Council of the Arts, "The Destruction of Lower Manhattan" is Danny Lyon's personal documentary of the destruction of Manhattan's oldest and most historic neighborhood. Although photographed in New York, this wholesale elimination of nineteenth-century neighborhoods is going on today in many cities across the country. The Destruction of Lower Manhattan is a historical record of a fast-disappearing scene and a beautiful portrait of buildings that we will never see again; but in a way, it is also a portrait of the people who lived there, of empty rooms with children's paintings, furniture, stairwells, walls, windows, panelings…an extraordinary and important document. It is a moving, powerful, and compassionate work of art."
The photos in this book made me cry; the buildings that were razed to make room for the World Trade Center?as well as part of the Pace University campus on the East Side?can never be brought back.
Danny Lyon lovingly photographed the buildings he broke into?just before they were demolished!?and showed a slice of life we'll never see again. The thought of him lugging around a 4 x 5 view camera and risking arrest, as well as life and limb, shows him to be just another great but insane photographer?and possibly the reincarnation of Wee-Gee. [crime scene photographer, early 20th century.]
The buildings, had they been left standing, would have been a developer's dream, but hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. I loved this book so much that when it became clear to me I was never going to get back the copy I lent to a neighbor (for "research"), I made it a point to order another copy.
