In the 1970s, New York was reeling from a decade of social unrest exacerbated by the exodus of the middle class to the suburbs and a national economic recession that hit the city’s manufacturing sector particularly hard. Crimes and financial crisis were the prevailing trends of the decade, with significant cuts in law enforcement and citywide unemployment topping 10%.
About 500,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in just five years, from 1969 to 1974, resulting in over one million households relying on welfare by 1975. Rapes and burglaries tripled, auto robberies and felony assaults multiplied, and murders increased from 681 to 1690 a year in about the same period.
Depopulation and arson had a significant impact on the city: empty blocks littered the landscape, resulting in large swaths of land devoid of urban cohesion and life.
Ernie Viskupic captured these fascinating black and white photographs of New York in the 1970s.
