The New York City of the s looked very different from the gentrified metropolis we know today. The Bowery, now lined with luxury apartments, housed much of the city's illicit activities, while drug dealers and prostitutes worked openly from Park Slope to Times Square.
Industrial decline, economic stagnation, and white flight led to the dramatic downturn for America's largest city. Gotham had an unprecedented fiscal crisis in , and two years later the city descended into chaos after the power went out for 25 hours.
New York City saw 1, homicides in β three times what we have today β while the population declined to just over 7 million from nearly 8 million a decade before.
Street violence had grown. Child abuse had grown hugely. Spousal abuse. I had a special crack violence file that I kept to convince the geniuses in Washington who kept telling me it wasn't a problem. By , the annual homicides in New York peaked at 2, The city lived in fear. A year-old runaway from Cambridge, Mass. The photo was taken five days after her murder.
A poster advertises a peep show in Times Square, the epicenter of the sex industry in New York City in This photo from shows three vials of pure heroin. By the '80s, Bryant Park became known as "Needle Park," due to the used syringes strewn across the ground. Heroin abuse didn't decline until the '90s. Source: Drugpolicy. Source: National Institute of Drug Abuse. Source: New York Times. Stanley Patz βEtan's father β and his son Ari hold a photo of Etan on the fire escape of their home.
