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Photo Book Reviews

The Destruction of Lower Manhattan by Danny Lyon (powerHouse) Reviewed by Erica Wright In the late 1960's, the buildings of lower Manhattan were commissioned to be destroyed to make way for the new.  Danny Lyon was there to capture the tearing down of 60 acres of New York City on film. Article rating: 10.00

The provocative title of Danny Lyon's recently reissued book, The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, may bring to mind some of those horrific images that flooded newspapers, magazines, and television in the days following September 11, 2001; however, the destruction that Lyon shot occurred nearly a quarter of a century before the World Trade Center fell to terrorism. Lyon's destruction took out multiple city buildings, streets, and blocks and was sanctioned by the New York City government. In 1967, some sixty acres of structures below Canal Street were demolished to make way for the new. This book shares Lyon's systematic documentation of those buildings on the wrecker list and his youthful perspective on the project.

Although Lyon saw "the buildings as fossils of a time past" (a phrase he now thinks inaccurate), those buildings existed during an era negligent in the arena of preservation. Perhaps despite the turmoil that the nation was enduring in the late 1960s, New York City was looking toward the future. And Lyon admits that these structures weren't necessarily of any architectural significance beyond their age, their existence during the Civil War for example.

As the photographs reveal, some of these structures were beautiful despite their so-called insignificance: 82 Beekman Street with its high, arched windows; 258 Washington Street, described as "possibly the oldest cast-iron building in the world;" 48 Ferry Street and its artist's sketches. But there's no need to feel guilty about favoring today's lower Manhattan while gazing at the predominantly bleak landscapes in these images. The subjects that are impressive in these pictures are the people that linger among the condemned buildings.

With an official-sounding letter from the New York State Council on the Arts, Lyon was able to weasel his way onto demolish sites. This access produced some of the most compelling images in The Destruction of Lower Manhattan. A section entitled "Looters and Workers, The Last Inhabitants" includes adolescent boys, maintenance men, foremen, and Lyon's lover at the time who eventually drew him away from the project. Her presence—as well as the presence of a female stranger in a phone booth—is startling in this overtly masculine environment. These photographs are dated, but that is part of their point. Today buildings are felled by dynamite, not by the hands of laborers one brick at a time.

Lyon's fascination with the demolition process and its men is evident in the journal entries he included. On May 17, 1967, he wrote, "The buildings are coming down brick by brick. They actually pick them apart. Men pry up the thin layer of wooden planks covering the floor, then others dig loose the large beams that are the floor and drop them into the building onto the floor below. Then workers on the wall pull out one brick after another and in this manner the building is lowered to the ground. It's all just a matter of changing shapes." Despite his enthusiasm, in the end he was disappointed with the results of his project. He claims in his epilogue to be "partly ashamed of the work" because he thought it "unoriginal."

This book was sandwiched between two of Lyon's most successful artistic endeavors—The Bikeriders, which followed the Chicago Outlaw Motorcycle Club (1963-1967) and Conversations with the Dead, which documented life inside the prison system of Texas (1967-1968). Perhaps Lyon's dissatisfaction with The Destruction of Lower Manhattan at the time stemmed partly from a difference of subject; though they may have been changing shape, the primary subjects of Lyon's project were inanimate.

Or perhaps he is reluctant to remember his petty theft of the time, his habit of purloining left objects from the emptied rooms. In any case, his willingness to put his youthful imperfections on display is refreshing, as is his omission of direct reference to September 11th, as if this reissue were not happening at an apt time. Then again, Lyon insists, "Change? What changes? Nothing changes. Just the people come and go," implying that no time is better than another. 

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