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History of New York City (1946-1977)
Encyclopedia
The history of New York City (1946–1977) saw the emergence of New York immediately after World War II as the unquestioned leader among major cities of the world. However, after peaking in population in 1950, the city began to feel the effects of white flight
to the suburbs, a downturn in industry and commerce as businesses left for places where it was cheaper and easier to operate, an increase in crime, and an upturn in its welfare burden, all of which reached a nadir in the city's fiscal crisis of the 1970s, when it barely avoided defaulting on its obligations and declaring bankruptcy.
, built 1947–1952, inherited the role of Paris as center of the art world with Abstract Expressionism
, and became a rival to London as an international art market. Yet the population declined after 1950, with increasing suburbanization in the New York metropolitan area
as pioneered in Levittown, New York
.
November 15, 1948 marked a significant turning point in the city's economy, when the Interstate Commerce Commission
began allowing barge
s to charge fees for transporting goods from rail terminals in New Jersey
to piers in Manhattan
. This led to the decline of the port, the piers, and places such as Washington Market in Lower Manhattan
.
Meanwhile, Midtown Manhattan
was experiencing an unprecedented building boom, fueled by postwar prosperity. This led to a drastic change in the appearance of Midtown, where glass and steel office towers in the new International Style
began to replace the ziggurat-style
towers of the prewar era. Also rapidly changing was the eastern edge of the East Village
close to the FDR Drive
. Large-scale public housing
projects supplanted many traditional apartment blocks. In Lower Manhattan, urban renewal
began to take shape at around 1960, led by David Rockefeller
with construction of his One Chase Manhattan Plaza
building.
In a built-out city, construction always entailed destruction. After the old Beaux Arts Pennsylvania Station
was torn down, growing concern for preservation led to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission Law of 1965. The city's other great train station, Grand Central, was also threatened with demolition but was eventually saved. Meanwhile, New York City's network of highways spread under the guidance of Robert Moses
, with consequent increased traffic congestion, but the defeat in 1962 of Moses' planned Lower Manhattan Expressway
by community activists led by Jane Jacobs
was an indication that Moses would no longer have the free hand he had enjoyed in the past.
baseball teams to booming California; the Dodgers
and the Giants
both moved after the 1957 season. A sports void was parrtially filled in 1962 with the formation of the Mets
in 1962, who played their first two seasons at the Polo Grounds
, the former home of the Giants, before moving to Shea Stadium
in Queens in 1964.
On November 9, 1965, New York endured a widespread power blackout
along with much of eastern North America. (The city's ordeal became the subject of the 1968 film
, Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
) The postwar population shift to the suburbs resulted in the decline of textile manufacturing and other traditional industries in New York, most of which also operated in extremely outdated facilities. With the arrival of container shipping, that industry shifted to New Jersey where there was more room for it. Blue-collar neighborhoods began to deteriorate and become centers of drugs and crime. Strip clubs and other adult businesses started filling Times Square in the late '60s.
In 1966, the US Navy decommissioned the Brooklyn Navy Yard
, ending a command going back to the early 19th century. It was sold to the city. The Yard continued as a site for shipbuilding for another eleven years.
The Transport Workers Union of America
(TWU) led by Mike Quill
shut down the city with a complete halt of subway and bus service
on mayor John Lindsay
's first day of office. As New Yorkers endured the transit strike, Lindsay remarked, "I still think it's a fun city," and walked four miles (6 km) from his hotel room to City Hall in a gesture to show it. Dick Schaap
, then a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune
, coined and popularized the sarcastic term in an article titled Fun City. In the article, Schaap sardonically pointed out that it wasn't.
The transit strike was the first of many labor struggles. In 1968 the teachers' union (the United Federation of Teachers
(UFT)) went on strike
over the firings of several teachers in a school in Ocean Hill
-Brownsville
. That same year, 1968, also saw a nine-day sanitation
strike. Quality of life in New York reached a nadir during this strike, as mounds of garbage
caught fire, and strong winds whirled the filth through the streets. With the schools shut down, the police engaged in a slowdown, firefighters threatening job actions, the city awash in garbage, and racial and religious tensions breaking to the surface, Lindsay later called the last six months of 1968 "the worst of my public life."
The passage of the federal Immigration Act of 1965, which abolished national-origin quotas, set the stage for increased immigration from Asia, which became the basis for New York's modern Asian American
community.
The Stonewall riots
were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn
, in the Greenwich Village
neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
. The city had become notorious the world over for high rates of crime and other social disorders. A popular song in the autumn of 1972, "American City Suite," by Cashman & West, chronicled, in allegorical fashion, the decline in the city's quality of life. The city's subway system was regarded as unsafe due to crime and suffered frequent mechanical breakdowns. Prostitutes and pimps frequented Times Square, while Central Park became feared as the site of muggings and rapes. Homeless persons and drug dealers occupied boarded-up and abandoned buildings. The NYPD was subject to investigation for widespread corruption, most famously in the 1971 testimony of whistle-blowing police officer Frank Serpico
.
US economic stagnation in the 1970s hit New York City particularly hard, as trading on the New York Stock Exchange
fell while the city's welfare spending continued. The city neared bankruptcy during the administration of Mayor Abraham Beame
but avoided that fate with the aid of a large federal loan. A statement by Mayor Beame was drafted and ready to be released on October 17, 1975, if the teachers' union did not invest $150 million from its pension funds in city securities. "I have been advised by the comptroller that the City of New York has insufficient cash on hand to meet debt obligations due today," the statement said. "This constitutes the default that we have struggled to avoid." The Beame statement was never distributed because Albert Shanker
, the teachers' union president, finally furnished $150 million from the union's pension fund to buy Municipal Assistance Corporation bonds. Two weeks later, President Gerald R. Ford angered many New Yorkers by refusing to grant the city a bailout, a decision famously summarized by the New York Daily News
headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead."
The New York City Blackout of 1977
struck on July 13 of that year and lasted for 25 hours, during which black and Hispanic neighborhoods fell prey to destruction and looting. Over 3,000 people were arrested, and the city's already crowded prisons were so overburdened that some suggested reopening the recently condemned Manhattan Detention Complex.
A rare highlight was the opening of the mammoth World Trade Center
complex in 1972. Conceived by David Rockefeller
and built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
on the site of the Radio Row electronics district in Lower Manhattan
, the Twin Towers briefly displaced the Empire State Building
in Midtown as the world's tallest before being displaced in turn by Chicago's Sears Tower
in 1973.
However, the financial crisis, high crime rates, and damage from the blackouts led to a widespread belief that New York City was in irreversible decline. By the end of the 1970s, nearly a million people had left since the '50s, a population loss that would not be recouped for another twenty years. The more fiscally conservative Ed Koch
was elected as mayor in 1977
.
White flight
White flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...
to the suburbs, a downturn in industry and commerce as businesses left for places where it was cheaper and easier to operate, an increase in crime, and an upturn in its welfare burden, all of which reached a nadir in the city's fiscal crisis of the 1970s, when it barely avoided defaulting on its obligations and declaring bankruptcy.
Postwar through mid-century
As many great cities lay in ruins after World War II, New York City assumed a new global prominence. It became the home of the United Nations headquartersUnited Nations headquarters
The headquarters of the United Nations is a complex in New York City. The complex has served as the official headquarters of the United Nations since its completion in 1952. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, on spacious grounds overlooking the East River...
, built 1947–1952, inherited the role of Paris as center of the art world with Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
, and became a rival to London as an international art market. Yet the population declined after 1950, with increasing suburbanization in the New York metropolitan area
New York metropolitan area
The New York metropolitan area, also known as Greater New York, or the Tri-State area, is the region that composes of New York City and the surrounding region...
as pioneered in Levittown, New York
Levittown, New York
Levittown is a hamlet in the Town of Hempstead located on Long Island in Nassau County, New York. Levittown is midway between the villages of Hempstead and Farmingdale. As of the 2010 census, the CDP had a total population of 51,881....
.
November 15, 1948 marked a significant turning point in the city's economy, when the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
began allowing barge
Barge
A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats...
s to charge fees for transporting goods from rail terminals in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
to piers in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. This led to the decline of the port, the piers, and places such as Washington Market in Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...
.
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan, or simply Midtown, is an area of Manhattan, New York City home to world-famous commercial zones such as Rockefeller Center, Broadway, and Times Square...
was experiencing an unprecedented building boom, fueled by postwar prosperity. This led to a drastic change in the appearance of Midtown, where glass and steel office towers in the new International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
began to replace the ziggurat-style
Ziggurat
Ziggurats were massive structures built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.Notable ziggurats include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, Iraq; the Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near...
towers of the prewar era. Also rapidly changing was the eastern edge of the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
close to the FDR Drive
Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive
The Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive is a freeway-standard parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
. Large-scale public housing
Public housing
Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the...
projects supplanted many traditional apartment blocks. In Lower Manhattan, urban renewal
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
began to take shape at around 1960, led by David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller, Sr. is the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family. He is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and the only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. His five siblings were...
with construction of his One Chase Manhattan Plaza
One Chase Manhattan Plaza
One Chase Manhattan Plaza is a banking skyscraper located in the downtown Manhattan Financial District of New York City, between Pine, Liberty, Nassau, and William Streets. Construction on the building was completed in 1961...
building.
In a built-out city, construction always entailed destruction. After the old Beaux Arts Pennsylvania Station
Pennsylvania Station (New York City)
Pennsylvania Station—commonly known as Penn Station—is the major intercity train station and a major commuter rail hub in New York City. It is one of the busiest rail stations in the world, and a hub for inbound and outbound railroad traffic in New York City. The New York City Subway system also...
was torn down, growing concern for preservation led to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission Law of 1965. The city's other great train station, Grand Central, was also threatened with demolition but was eventually saved. Meanwhile, New York City's network of highways spread under the guidance of Robert Moses
Robert Moses
Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...
, with consequent increased traffic congestion, but the defeat in 1962 of Moses' planned Lower Manhattan Expressway
Lower Manhattan Expressway
The Lower Manhattan Expressway was a controversial plan for an expressway through lower Manhattan originally conceived by Robert Moses in 1941, but delayed until the early 1960s...
by community activists led by Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, was an American-Canadian writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities , a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States...
was an indication that Moses would no longer have the free hand he had enjoyed in the past.
1960s
During the '60s, a gradual economic and social decay set in. A symptom of the city's waning competitiveness was the loss of both its longtime resident National LeagueNational League
The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League , is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball, and the world's oldest extant professional team sports league. Founded on February 2, 1876, to replace the National Association of Professional...
baseball teams to booming California; the Dodgers
Los Angeles Dodgers
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a professional baseball team based in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers are members of Major League Baseball's National League West Division. Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known by a number of nicknames before becoming...
and the Giants
San Francisco Giants
The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the National League West Division....
both moved after the 1957 season. A sports void was parrtially filled in 1962 with the formation of the Mets
New York Mets
The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...
in 1962, who played their first two seasons at the Polo Grounds
Polo Grounds
The Polo Grounds was the name given to four different stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used by many professional teams in both baseball and American football from 1880 until 1963...
, the former home of the Giants, before moving to Shea Stadium
Shea Stadium
William A. Shea Municipal Stadium, usually shortened to Shea Stadium or just Shea , was a stadium in the New York City borough of Queens, in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. It was the home baseball park of Major League Baseball's New York Mets from 1964 to 2008...
in Queens in 1964.
Northeast Blackout of 1965
The Northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on November 9, 1965, affecting Ontario, Canada and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey in the United States...
along with much of eastern North America. (The city's ordeal became the subject of the 1968 film
1968 in film
The year 1968 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 30 - The film The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn, debuts.* November 1 - The MPAA's film rating system is introduced.-Top grossing films :- Awards :...
, Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? is a 1968 American comedy film with Doris Day, directed by Hy Averback. Although it is set in New York City during the major blackout of November 9, 1965, in which 25 million people scattered throughout seven northeastern states and Ontario, Canada lost...
) The postwar population shift to the suburbs resulted in the decline of textile manufacturing and other traditional industries in New York, most of which also operated in extremely outdated facilities. With the arrival of container shipping, that industry shifted to New Jersey where there was more room for it. Blue-collar neighborhoods began to deteriorate and become centers of drugs and crime. Strip clubs and other adult businesses started filling Times Square in the late '60s.
In 1966, the US Navy decommissioned the Brooklyn Navy Yard
Brooklyn Navy Yard
The United States Navy Yard, New York–better known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the New York Naval Shipyard –was an American shipyard located in Brooklyn, northeast of the Battery on the East River in Wallabout Basin, a semicircular bend of the river across from Corlear's Hook in Manhattan...
, ending a command going back to the early 19th century. It was sold to the city. The Yard continued as a site for shipbuilding for another eleven years.
The Transport Workers Union of America
Transport Workers Union of America
Transport Workers Union of America is a United States labor union that was founded in 1934 by subway workers in New York City, then expanded to represent transit employees in other cities, primarily in the eastern U.S. This article discusses the parent union and its largest local, Local 100,...
(TWU) led by Mike Quill
Mike Quill
Michael J. Quill was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America , a union founded by subway workers in New York City that expanded to represent employees in other forms of transit, and the President of the TWU for most of the first thirty years of its existence...
shut down the city with a complete halt of subway and bus service
1966 New York City transit strike
The 1966 New York City transit strike was a strike in New York City called by the Transport Workers Union and Amalgamated Transit Union after the expiration of their contract with the New York City Transit Authority . It was the first strike against the TA; pre-TWU transit strikes in 1905, 1910,...
on mayor John Lindsay
John Lindsay
John Vliet Lindsay was an American politician, lawyer and broadcaster who was a U.S. Congressman, Mayor of New York City, candidate for U.S...
's first day of office. As New Yorkers endured the transit strike, Lindsay remarked, "I still think it's a fun city," and walked four miles (6 km) from his hotel room to City Hall in a gesture to show it. Dick Schaap
Dick Schaap
Richard Jay Schaap was an American sportswriter, broadcaster, and author.-Early life and education:...
, then a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
, coined and popularized the sarcastic term in an article titled Fun City. In the article, Schaap sardonically pointed out that it wasn't.
The transit strike was the first of many labor struggles. In 1968 the teachers' union (the United Federation of Teachers
United Federation of Teachers
The United Federation of Teachers is the labor union that represents most educators in New York City public schools. , there were about 118,000 in-service educators and 17,000 paraprofessionals in the union, as well as about 54,000 retired members...
(UFT)) went on strike
New York City teacher's strike of 1968
The New York City teachers' strike of 1968 was a months-long confrontation between the new community-controlled school board in the largely black Ocean-Hill Brownsville section of Brooklyn and New York City’s United Federation of Teachers...
over the firings of several teachers in a school in Ocean Hill
Ocean Hill, Brooklyn
Ocean Hill is a subsection of Bedford-Stuyvesant in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Founded in 1890, the neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 3 and Brooklyn Community Board 16. The ZIP code for the neighborhood is 11233...
-Brownsville
Brownsville, Brooklyn
Brownsville is a residential neighborhood located in eastern Brooklyn, New York City.The total land area is one square mile, and the ZIP code for the neighborhood is 11212....
. That same year, 1968, also saw a nine-day sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
strike. Quality of life in New York reached a nadir during this strike, as mounds of garbage
Waste
Waste is unwanted or useless materials. In biology, waste is any of the many unwanted substances or toxins that are expelled from living organisms, metabolic waste; such as urea, sweat or feces. Litter is waste which has been disposed of improperly...
caught fire, and strong winds whirled the filth through the streets. With the schools shut down, the police engaged in a slowdown, firefighters threatening job actions, the city awash in garbage, and racial and religious tensions breaking to the surface, Lindsay later called the last six months of 1968 "the worst of my public life."
The passage of the federal Immigration Act of 1965, which abolished national-origin quotas, set the stage for increased immigration from Asia, which became the basis for New York's modern Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
community.
The Stonewall riots
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn
Stonewall Inn
The Stonewall Inn, often shortened to Stonewall is an American bar in New York City and the site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for gay and lesbian rights in the United...
, in the Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
1970s
The 1970s are regarded by some as New York's nadirNadir (disambiguation)
The nadir is a low or downward point of reference.Nadir may also refer to:* Nadir * Nadirs , by Herta Müller* The Nadir, a fictional tribe in the novel Legend and other works by David Gemmell...
. The city had become notorious the world over for high rates of crime and other social disorders. A popular song in the autumn of 1972, "American City Suite," by Cashman & West, chronicled, in allegorical fashion, the decline in the city's quality of life. The city's subway system was regarded as unsafe due to crime and suffered frequent mechanical breakdowns. Prostitutes and pimps frequented Times Square, while Central Park became feared as the site of muggings and rapes. Homeless persons and drug dealers occupied boarded-up and abandoned buildings. The NYPD was subject to investigation for widespread corruption, most famously in the 1971 testimony of whistle-blowing police officer Frank Serpico
Frank Serpico
Francesco Vincent Serpico is a retired American New York City Police Department officer who is most famous for testifying against police corruption in 1971...
.
US economic stagnation in the 1970s hit New York City particularly hard, as trading on the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
fell while the city's welfare spending continued. The city neared bankruptcy during the administration of Mayor Abraham Beame
Abraham Beame
Abraham David "Abe" Beame was mayor of New York City from 1974 to 1977. As such, he presided over the city during the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s, during which the city was almost forced to declare bankruptcy....
but avoided that fate with the aid of a large federal loan. A statement by Mayor Beame was drafted and ready to be released on October 17, 1975, if the teachers' union did not invest $150 million from its pension funds in city securities. "I have been advised by the comptroller that the City of New York has insufficient cash on hand to meet debt obligations due today," the statement said. "This constitutes the default that we have struggled to avoid." The Beame statement was never distributed because Albert Shanker
Albert Shanker
Albert Shanker was President of the United Federation of Teachers from 1964 to 1984 as well as President of the American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to 1997.-Early life:...
, the teachers' union president, finally furnished $150 million from the union's pension fund to buy Municipal Assistance Corporation bonds. Two weeks later, President Gerald R. Ford angered many New Yorkers by refusing to grant the city a bailout, a decision famously summarized by the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead."
The New York City Blackout of 1977
New York City blackout of 1977
The New York City blackout of 1977 was an electricity blackout affected most of New York City from July 13, 1977 to July 14, 1977. The only neighborhoods in New York City that were not affected were in southern Queens, and neighborhoods of the Rockaways, which are part of the Long Island Lighting...
struck on July 13 of that year and lasted for 25 hours, during which black and Hispanic neighborhoods fell prey to destruction and looting. Over 3,000 people were arrested, and the city's already crowded prisons were so overburdened that some suggested reopening the recently condemned Manhattan Detention Complex.
A rare highlight was the opening of the mammoth World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
complex in 1972. Conceived by David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller, Sr. is the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family. He is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and the only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. His five siblings were...
and built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is a bi-state port district, established in 1921 through an interstate compact, that runs most of the regional transportation infrastructure, including the bridges, tunnels, airports, and seaports, within the Port of New York and New Jersey...
on the site of the Radio Row electronics district in Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...
, the Twin Towers briefly displaced the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
in Midtown as the world's tallest before being displaced in turn by Chicago's Sears Tower
Sears Tower
Sears' optimistic growth projections were not met. Competition from its traditional rivals continued, with new competition by retailing giants such as Kmart, Kohl's, and Wal-Mart. The fortunes of Sears & Roebuck declined in the 1970s as the company lost market share; its management grew more...
in 1973.
However, the financial crisis, high crime rates, and damage from the blackouts led to a widespread belief that New York City was in irreversible decline. By the end of the 1970s, nearly a million people had left since the '50s, a population loss that would not be recouped for another twenty years. The more fiscally conservative Ed Koch
Ed Koch
Edward Irving "Ed" Koch is an American lawyer, politician, and political commentator. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and three terms as mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989...
was elected as mayor in 1977
New York City mayoral election, 1977
The New York City mayoral election of 1977 occurred on Tuesday, November 8, 1977.Incumbent mayor Abraham Beame, a Democrat, was challenged by five other Democrats, including Representative Ed Koch, New York Secretary of State Mario Cuomo, and feminist activist and former Representative Bella Abzug...
.