(first posted 11/7/2016) In 1973, I was a performer in an experimental theater company, and we got a gig to play in NYC, for six weeks, in the Village. Since our performances were in the evening, we had all day to roam the city. And roam I did, on foot mostly, up and down and across much of it; it was a wonderful way to get a deep immersion. When I stumbled across this collection of snapshots of NYC street scenes of the 70s, it really took me back there. So let me take you back with me…
Cop cars, probably with slant sixes, as so many were at the time. No need to be able to go very fast in Manhattan.
That would be the fairly youthful QE II in the background.
Dents,
And more dents.
I love this shot; a familiar view of anyone who’s spent time looking down a window in NYC.
Mack trucks dominated the heavy fleet in NYC then; here’s both an older B-Series and its replacement.
These were once someone’s snap shots, but probably picked up at a sale or such, so no identification of the subject here. But his outfit is as vintage as the cars behind him.
No, that’s not our troupe doing street theater (in the most literal sense), but it does evoke the times.
Not a lot of rust…that’s how I remember the cars of Metro NYC when I lived there in the late 1970’s.
Not hard to imagine once you understand a good snowstorm could basically shut the city down. People simply weren’t going out, so there wasn’t the exposure to salt you found, say, along the I-90 Thruway corridor.
I think it explains why cars rust horribly fast in metro Detroit too. People would travel regardless of snow ( unless the snowstorm is heavy enough and rear view mirror isn’t visible. People still travel when snow is so heavy and I can’t clearly see the hood ornament ) and road commission would salt the road like gravel. Adding the concentration of salt mines, cars probably have the highest exposure to road salt in south-west Michigan among the world.
Lots of older models all around the few new ones. Shows the hard times 70s NYC was facing. Big cities being so hard on cars, makes the point that the older models really were durable, if a pain to park. Remember power steering wasn’t universal on American sized cars in the late 60s.
It must be harder today to own a car in NYC. I wonder if the numbers of cars registered there has started to drop?
One source I found says that the rate of car ownership in the city has actually increased, while the percentage of New York City residents who drive to work has decreased.
That’s very likely more a product of the average household income in NYC being substantially higher than it was a couple decades ago. Even areas of the city that were predominantly low income as recently as the late 90’s have been “gentrified”.
I enjoyed the first photo, with the black 1964 Rambler Ambassador 4DR in the passing lane flanked in its RR blind spot (ahead of the bus) by a 1970 or ’71 Audi 100LS – both, cars which were in my family as I was growing up.
All I noticed in the remaining pics were what I remember NYC being in the 1970s…overgrown with weeds (where they would grow at all) and overrun with loose trash in the streets. Man, what a filthy city that was. If nothing else, Hizzoner Giuliani really got the city to clean up its act and take some pride in itself again.
I believe that the black car in that photo is a 1964 full-size Chevrolet, not a Rambler.
Cool shots.
Particularly like that 64 Ford in the shot with the trucks, that’s my favorite big Ford.
I don’t think I want to eat at the terminal diner next to Katzenstein’s garage through. Sounds….terminal.
Love the M.T.A. Fishbowl in the first shot. N.Y. had special versions, the T6H-5309 and 5310. I think the primary differences were the seating.
The guy in the blue jeans and dk brown jacket is cute in a Tony Orlando kind of way. And the Caddy behind him looks to be a ’77 so this pic was taken a bit later than most of the others.
New York City was a dirty, crime-infested bleak place in the 1970s.
That would be an ’80 Toyota over Tony’s left shoulder.
Love the cobblestones peaking through ancient asphalt and the old, elevated West Side Highway. And there was a time when the Hudson and East rivers was lined with piers…pretty much all gone now.
The street theater appears to be the Pulaski Skyway, connecting Jersey City and Newark.
And the Caddy looks to be an ’80 or later. The roofline is a bit more squared off than the ’77 to ’79s, and the chrome surrounds for the tail lamps are heavier and more hexagonal.
I took a second look at that pic and I think you’re right Buzz, it’s definitely an ’80 or later.
Ah, the garbage-strewn streets of my youth! These images are all too familiar to me, although 1973 was the year I finally bugged out of The Rotten Apple and moved to Vermont.
One of the first real jobs I ever had was as a driver’s helper on an Empire International Loadstar identical to the one emerging from the tunnel in the first photo.
Growing up in NJ, I went to NYC quite often in the 70’s and 80’s
Only seeing banged up, ratty cars I would always wonder why anyone would own, let alone buy a new car there. Love the 73 Grand Am!
Those pics remind me, like Gene Herman above of the NYC of my youth. I’m one of those sickos who misses the grittiness of Old New York. I actually found myself sitting in a video bar in Chelsea about ten years ago and an old Blondie video was playing, depicting Debbie Harry in a Checker cab careening all over lower Manhattan. My friend and I both raised our glasses and smiled simultaneously, saying, “Man, look at the filth. God, wasn’t it f*%$ing great?’ But I digress.
I’m struck by the following distances and orderly adherence to lanes in that first picture. I’ve driven that very stretch of road numerous times in traffic, and it’s mayhem nowadays. I wonder if drum brakes, bias ply tires and sloppy handling actually helped drivers maintain courteous distances and keep order on the streets back then. I was far too young to drive then, but I did drive a mid-’80’s pickup with 4-speed manual and granny gear in city traffic, and between the size, the ponderous handling and the stopping distances under full load it certainly did make me a far more cautious and courteous city driver than I normally am.
Yeah, I used to see a certain charm in urban decay and apocalyptic landscapes. Not so much anymore. I must be getting old. 😉
That first shot reminds me the most of my earliest car memories growing up in connecticut in the 1970s and driving into new york fairly often. These are the cars I remember well: Buick Skylark, Datson, Audi 100, VW Beetle, Volvo 164, Cadillac Sedan De Ville, Nova, Chevelle, Impala, Mercury and more. Love that scene!
Awesome pictures! I love these period shots with the cars, and it is cool to see NYC back then when it was a bit rougher. One thing I remember as a little kid when I went with my family to NYC for the first time (it was the summer of 1973 and I was 6) were the abandoned cars found in certain areas. I remember you could see groups of cars dumped by the side of highways or just sitting, dented and stripped of parts, on some city streets.
Yes, the Pinto with the stripe is a 79 or 80. So some pics are later.
Reminds me of old Kojak reruns.
Happy Motoring, Mark
“Who loves ya, baby!” Kojak’s favourite line I think.
Great pictures! These remind me of how dominant GM cars were in the 60s and 70s. They also remind me of how ratty and used up most 60s cars looked by the late 70s. Then as now, you had to look for the ones owned by old timers who didn’t drive a lot to be any good. They seemed to gravitate towards Mopars then, so life was good for me.
Yes, cars in the upper midwest were rustier than these, perhaps because we didn’t have decent transit alternatives. You drove whether it was slick or not.
“We’re goin down to the Honda shop I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do”
These shots depict aspects of the urban degradation that was taking place back then, and yet for me they show something of a utopia. These scenes are redolent of some of the best years in US car styling, and – obliquely – the best in US filmmaking that occurred against these backgrounds. I could immerse myself in this milieu all day. The past is a foreign country…
very well said !
Speaking of films, these remind me of scenes from “The French Connection,” a bleak gloomy urban jungle.
Maybe we rely too much on films & TV, for my mental picture of NYC from the ’40s thru ’60s is much more positive.
It reminds me also of “The French Connection” too as well as the first “Death Wish” movie, “The Seven-ups”, “Cotton comes to Harlem”, “Across 110th street” who show a nice car landscape in the opening credits for the era.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxCsIX6iU5o
I could also add the opening credits of “Welcome back Kotter” in the list.
In the “close but no cigar” category, I could mention that car chase from the movie “Vigilante” (1983) lots of 1970s used but you see some 1980s cars in the street landscape as well.
My favorite 70s movie set in NYC is The Taking of Pelham 123 (the real one with Walter Matthau). The plot is contrived and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the movie overall is a nice snapshot of how New York looked and felt at that time. It was still a great American city (arguably THE great American city), but it had fallen on hard times, and people were doing their best just to hold things together.
The director smartly places Japanese visitors in the movie, looking on quizzically at an urban dystopia that somehow manages to function day by day.
I haven’t seen the movie in a while, so I don’t remember if the subway cars in the film are covered with graffiti like the real subway cars were then. That may be the best symbol for the city’s 70s decay (and everyone’s general acquiescence to it). My most vivid mental image of a childhood visit to NYC was the graffiti-plastered subway and how dangerous it made the transit system seem.
Actually, that may be my second-most vivid memory, after the ubiquity of Checker Marathon cabs with their bulbous, anachronistic styling. There has been something missing in New York since the Checkers all went away.
Yeah, Checker cabs really said, “New York City”. Are there any still in operation? If not, I wonder when the last one was taken out of service. Certainly would have been a sad day for the city.
According to NYT, the last one mustered out in July, 1999.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/27/nyregion/last-new-york-checker-turns-off-its-meter-for-good.html
I lived in the city from 1996 to 2000. At the time, the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission exempted Checker operators from the vehicle age limit, allowing the few holdouts to continue as a goodwill gesture. My recollection is that in late 1996 and 1997, when I lived near Times Square, there were 3 still in operation. You’d invariably see one of them every few weeks and be amazed. They were like celebrities. People definitely noticed — heads would swivel when they drove by. At that point, their condition was veering from “total heap” into “vehicle constructed entirely from bondo” territory.
Well said Don.
The NYC of the 40s thru early 60s was portrayed more positively by Hollywood, in part because it was a G-rated era. There was grime then too.
The biggest change (and people tend to exaggerate) was, when I was a kid in the 1970s on Long Island, people my parents’ age would comment on “crime is awful, it wasn’t like that when we were young”
Great pictures though, NYC look similar in 1977 to 1973, just newer cars (like that 1980 photo).
I certainly agree about the filmmaking. The styling…not quite so much. Maybe I was overexposed to it.
My head says the best of US styling happened in the 1960s, but my heart says it was the early 70s. Thanks for posting these pics.
last photo —
’67 Olds 98 4-dr. sedan …. behind a ’65-67 VW Beetle, ….behind a ’65-ish top-down MGB.
Gotta love the variety.
it’s a shame that these weren’t properly attributed on vintage everyday. some of these are from andy blair.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wavz13/albums/72157622632536255/with/4223350709/
and some are from m-joedicke (petershagen).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/m-joedicke/albums/72157612651284526
i love their work and i’ve been following both of them on flickr for awhile.
As someone who’s always lived in the west I’m suprised there aren’t more Japanese cars in the pictures. Maybe that was more of west coast thing, or maybe sales of Japanese cars just hadn’t caught fire yet.
I grew up there and then. NYC has to be one of the toughest environments in which to own a car. The cars pictured here, dents, scrapes, dings and all, are typical of the life of a car in NYC.
Anecdote: An old friend, who is a lifelong Brooklyn resident, owned a 1990 Corolla for 18 years. Most of his travel was on mass transit, and the Toyota was only used for road trips.
He retired it in 2008. It only had 20,000 miles on the odometer, but it looked and ran like it had 320,000.
In that second shot there is a reminder of how much more popular were two-door cars – coupes/hardtops, sedans – during those years than now.
Yes, the NYC of French Connection. I travel to NYC 6-8 times a year because I work part-time for a company in Manhattan and also love theater and it is so different now. Clean, shiny, expensive – with clean, shiny, expensive cars everywhere.
I always appreciated a rare sighting of a ’71-’76 Olds Custom Cruiser. Along with the New Yorker wagons, they looked like battleships with those wheel skirts.
Ugh. Those wheels.
+1. They really don’t suit.
The dockside parking lot would probably not fly nowadays, with just the curb to keep you from driving into the drink. Pictures like that are like old porn to lawyers.
You can almost smell the incomplete combustion.
I found a more recent view (2013) of the 10th pic down, so I put it beside the original. The Terminal Diner (an unfortunate name for an eatery) was at 237 West Street, along the Hudson River, Just west of the Holland Tunnel entrance. The newer shot is from 2013. The old diner had been derelict for some years.
http://www.scoutingny.com/the-sad-little-diner-on-west-street/
Thanks for this, I always love seeing then & now shots of buildings with cars.
Nice that the building is still standing. Too bad they lost a few details in the reno, like the curved tops of the windows.
i’ve been collecting old photos of tribeca from the web for years. you can see them here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3696qsvmgfde3kv/AABTaJuMFeQk1Dvx97cNXnKra?dl=0
Purtty cool!
Nice pictures! A few observations…a lot of Beetles…anyone notice the notchback Vega in the second photo, a propos of a CC entry from last week…boat tail Riviera parked next to a Torino in the 5th photo…Katzenstein’s has become Weinstock, the underworld kingpin from The French Connection and the picture of the mustard coloured Galaxie with the huge dent in the rear passenger door…can you imagine the New York accent swearing when that happened?
Nice find! The waterfront (?) picture is really the only one that seems to come close to showing the vehicular variety we’re used to today: imports (Volvo, VW, not one but two Fiats! – plus Toyota and Datsun), domestics, large and small cars, pickups, vans (full-size and mini, ie VW), even SUV’s (full size Jeep and Suburban). The mix is different, but except for crossovers, most of the today’s styles are accounted for. By the way, the bikes in front of the motorcycle shop look mostly, perhaps all, Japanese, even if there are far fewer Japanese cars in the other pictures than today.
the thing I noticed was all the colour combinations! I had forgotten how much today’s traffic scenes are 38 different colours of silver, or gray or whatever other boring colour is in that year. and I know vinyl roofs took a lot more care and rotted out underneath but they did dress up just about anything versus todays monochrome blobs.
actually makes me miss my 93 tempo, with its two-tone red and silver exterior and ALL red interior.
That’s funny, because I thought it was about as monochromatic as today, despite the “common wisdom” that cars used to be more colorful; lots of dull browns and tans, and quite a few silvers and grays.
Look at that first pic!
What stands out is all the trash. Wasn’t NYC council bust so no money to pay the trash collection workers. So different from when I visited back in 1992.
Thanks, Paul, these are great. I first moved to the NYC area in the fall of ’83, and it really looked exactly like this – and for much of the 80s. Dirty, gray, with large swaths of Manhattan underutilized or empty. The difference today is striking.
I recognize many of these locations. The third shot is the corner of West End Avenue and 95th Street; I lived 6 blocks away in the late 80s/early 90s. Those Tudor buildings on the right are Pomander Walk – a 1920’s development with an interior street that’s in much, much better condition now. As are the cars on the street!
One thing I’m surprised you don’t see are the triangular steel plates everyone used to put around their trunk lock to prevent jimmying. You used to see them everywhere.
Anyone notice the sign for Attorney Lynne Stewart in the bike shop picture? I wonder if it’s the infamous lawyer who defended blind terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, and went to jail for passing messages between Abdel-Rahman and his supporters while he was in jail.
According, to Wikipedia, she wasn’t admitted to the bar in New York until 1977.
I suppose there could be more than one attorney named Lynne Stewart in NY.
Reminds me of my area of Chicago 15 years ago. Still rough and dirty. The cars were slightly rounder though.
NYC is the only major American city I’ve never been to. Every time I plan a trip there something comes up and I have to cancel. One of these days.
I grew up 22 miles north of Times Square. I remember driving into the city in the late ’50s early 60’s and amazed at being able to find a parking spot with little trouble. Driving in traffic on the higher speed roadways was proof that most people have good reflexes as streams of traffic wound along, seemingly inches apart, like flocks of black birds or schools of fish. Back then only luxo cars had huge tail lights and it would annoy me to be blinded by them constantly as brakes and gas pedals alternated in the choreography of avoiding contact. The comment above about the then less maneuverable vehicles forcing people to drive more carefully is very true. Today’s higher end vehicles with precise control and instant acceleration provoke dangerous, erratic driving. You have to have the latest technology to survive in urban traffic today.
I knew people in Manhattan who paid much more for a space in a parking garage than they paid for their rent-controlled apartment. Today, ordinary people would not be able to afford either one. Real estate inflation in places like New York is like a neutron bomb, displacing the working classes into three hour commutes from the hinterlands.
The idiots behind the wheel of the “high end”, “precise control” vehicles are the problem, more so than the vehicles.
I had forgotten how many station wagons used to roam the roads, especially wood grained. So much more character than today’s mini vans!
I like wagons. I guess vans & SUVs just were/are more profitable – especially when you can take a light truck, and dress it up to sell for a Lexus or Lincoln price. Plus, for a long time, trucks were exempt from most safety, emissions and fuel-economy standards.
I knew a guy that worked for a local Ford dealer, when the Crown-Vic was still available as a wagon. He told me his customers were always asking about the wagons, but the dealer management refused to keep any in stock!
Happy Motoring, Mark
Classic example of Unintended Consequences: CAFE exterminates Yank Tanks, so customers buy exempt & equally profitable monster trucks instead. At least they can get them with diesels now, which might’ve been nice back then, had not corporate stupidity (Old V8) scared people off.
It would’ve been more straightforward to simply raise Fed. fuel taxes, but that would be political suicide. People want the things higher taxes promise, but they don’t want to pay them.
Hey! I’ve been to the Terminal Diner! I used to walk up West Street, going home to Greenwich Village in the early 80s. Why’d I go in? Who remembers. Oh, I know, I like the Stainless Steel Diners!
What an unfortunate window renovation was foisted on the old Katzenstein garage building. Changing the arch-topped windows to square wouldn’t pass under today’s preservation requirements!
Is that the QEII in the background of the first pic? Can’t think of any other ship that looks like that! (double check… yup, it says ‘Cunard’ on the side.
Cars rusted just fine in NYC. I remember that the preponderance of large Dodges and Plymouths from Brooklyn’s Hasidic neighborhoods were particularly dented and rusty….But there were a good number that didn’t, the cars based in Manhattan, I think — the underground steam pipes worked the snow removal more than salt in the old days!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Katzenstein
Seems to be gone completely
https://www.google.com/maps/place/358+West+St,+New+York,+NY+10014/@40.7301469,-74.0104824,3a,75y,104.27h,97.59t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJ_-f0Qcykw17kW9VOhUDAw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c259ed90c76807:0x194a525b4c3e797b!8m2!3d40.7302073!4d-74.0102439
Difficult to imagine being able to breathe. I’m just old enough to remember when exhaust stench was sometimes less and sometimes more, but always present in and around city streets and parking lots.
(“Terminal Diner”, oh dear.)
Order up the “wreck”.
Being an OLD Opel & OLD BMW 2002 fanatic, I’m always scouring old photos for them.
(I think) I see 3 Opels. A red Kadett sedan, a green Manta pre-“74, & another early white Kadett wagon (might be a Datsun 510 wagon?).
Thanks.
Love the vintage car chase movies with the old cars! There’s the “ Bullitt (1968)” chase & “The Seven-Ups Car Chase (1973) “ ,where they hit a Blue Opel Kadett wagon @ 02:40. Then, the SAME Opel, (now painted red with SAME hood dent & roof luggage rack) is hit again @ 05:00. Poor Opel! 8-(
Notice the chase car sound track is a high performance motor with a manual tranny. Yet you see the steering column automatic shifter & the one huge brake pedal (no clutch) in a few shots! lol
Ditto re: the “Bimmer” 2002! Just spotted a green one about 2-2.5 weeks ago.
Loved the “Opel GT” a bunch too!
I forgot how prevalent vinyl roofs were. My family had several – a 71 lesabre, 75 caprice, and a 68 mustang in that exact color scheme as in the bottom right of pic 2.
We had ‘surprisingly few”. Sister /brother in law had about 4-5 though.
You never see pics of nice neighborhoods with Shiney Caddys and Oldsmobiles parked in front of nice restaurants in Brooklyn and the East Bronx,it’s always these gritty photos. NY and the world was different then and in a lot of ways better,more human and genuine.
There’s still a bit of that atmosphere left in Vancouver, Canada I think. A bit behind in infrastructure, similar roads, etc. They could still shoot “Taxi Driver II” there if they want to without changing much if anything at all.
When I first traveled to NYC for work in ’79, I noticed (besides the filth) was that just about every car and truck had one or more dents, no matter the age.
Abandoned stripped vehicles were numerous too.
Takes me back as well.
In the mid ’70s I was in and out of university in Halifax NS, sometimes working, sometimes not. Funds were low and hitchhiking was easy at that time, as was as crossing the Canada-US border.
I made a couple of trips down into New England (think Paul Simon’s ‘Duncan’, “born in the boredom and the chowder” 🙂 ) and through the States to southern Ontario. On my way home once in November, in western Massachusetts, I was trying to veer up towards Portland Maine and the ferry to Nova Scotia, but the traffic was pulling me inevitably towards Boston. My final ride was with a couple of friendly stoners (‘All Things Must Pass’ playing on the tape deck), who dropped me off downtown around midnight.
Spending scarce money on a hotel in my early 20s seemed a waste, so I spent the rest of the night just walking the streets. Nighttime in a big American city felt like an alternate universe, maybe another frontier, populated more by cars than people. My lasting memory is of huge 1970’s land yachts – like the ones in these pictures – darkened windows obscured by mist, endlessly gliding the streets and floating/crashing through rain-filled potholes in a period-perfect display of 70’s decay and affluence. Memories also came back at the time of another trip to Boston 10 years earlier with my parents, when we stayed in a fancy hotel and saw John Gielgud and Richard Burton in ‘Hamlet’. It was a longer night than I expected.
When daylight finally returned I got back on the road towards Portland and the ferry to Yarmouth. Home in the hinterland felt good to return to.
That is Treat Williams and Beverly D’Angelo from the movie version of “Hair” – 1979. It looks like they are shooting a promo for the movie.
I recently found this neat photo online, showing the ‘Queensway’ in Ottawa, circa 1966. What’s interesting, is the newly-built Queensway was a high-speed freeway, spanning the city. To have a Canadian Pacific railway line, and locomotive, crossing the highway, is definitely a by-product of earlier times.
I remember this style of vintage ‘caution’ signs, being used well-into the 1970s. All steel, with their dim blinking lights.
Interesting to be sure, and I say that as one who is always looking at what cars are visible in older movies. Now it may be I recall a more limited demographic than overall, but living in Los Angeles at the time it seemed like a third of the vehicles were VW Bugs, not a ton of other than VW European, and a modest, but definite start of the Japanese boom. The NYC pictures show still an overwhelming domestic fleet.
Native new Yorker got a kickout of this and especially as I tried to locate by borough and streets.