What Manhattan Looked Like in the 1970s Through My Eyes, Part 2

All photos copyright Betsy van Die and available in high resolution from original negatives. Permission needed to reproduce.

By the time I was in my second year at RISD, I considered myself a veteran visitor of NYC. I was attracted to Times Square and all the sordid sights. I never would have dreamed of photographing the seedier side of Chicago’s strip clubs in the South Loop. Somehow I felt emboldened being away from home and photographing in NYC. 

Times Square was a far cry from my ivory tower art school existence in Providence and even farther from my idyllic suburban Chicago upbringing. I found Times Square both fascinating and repulsive and completely different than anything I had ever seen. I was not a total rube, having spent a lot of time as a kid in the City of Chicago itself – but NYC was unique and I was smitten. I shot a lot of B & W photos in Times Square, and in retrospect, I was lucky that nobody bothered me.

But I have so many regrets regarding photos I didn’t take back in the day, including 42^nd Street and the interiors of diners and bars. Probably best that I didn’t venture into the latter, since I was an attractive young woman by myself.

November 1977

Tiger Sign Company, Bowery and Delancey

I couldn’t find out anything about this business, but still love the signage.

 

Pearl Paint and Canal Street Jeans

Canal Street was one of my favorite hangouts thanks to Pearl Paint, all the cool job lot stores, Canal Jean Co., a dingy little antique mall, and street vendors selling vintage stuff. Pearl Paint’s NYC demise reflected the passage of time and loss of my youth. It was one more sign of gentrification that has nearly destroyed the character of NYC, the city I fell in love with and photographed as a young art student.

This photo was included in The Afterlife of Eva Hesse’s “Expanded Expansion” film at the Guggenheim Museum (at 1:40 in the film). It was published in the Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon exhibit catalog at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. And it was featured in the short documentary, In the Face of It: The Life and Work of Eva Hesse that was shown at Hauser & Wirth.

 

Chock full o’ Nuts, Canal Street

I loved hanging out on Canal Street and took many photos there, long before it was destroyed by counterfeit products and cheap souvenirs that all look the same.

The first Chock full o’ Nuts nut roasting shop opened on Broadway and 43rd Street in 1926 and the company soon expanded to 17 more locations. In the 1950s, there were 80 locations in NYC, but these gradually started closing in the 1970s. But their iconic coffee still exists.

 

Dave’s Corner Luncheonette, 416 Broadway at Canal Street

I loved Canal Street in the mid-1970s to early 1980s and was particularly enamored of Dave’s Luncheonette (aka Dave’s Corner), a 24-hour diner on the southeast corner of Canal and Broadway. Truck drivers, locals, and patrons from the nearby Mudd Club at 77 White Street would hang out there, among others.

I never ate inside at one of the horseshoe-shaped counters, but I clearly remember getting an egg cream to go for 45 cents on more than one occasion! Dave’s was still around in 1984, but I believe it closed around 1990. I wish I had shot Dave’s in its full glory from across the street with its gorgeous vertical and horizontal neon signs.

 

Barber in his Lafayette Street Shop

 As a fine artist and photographer, I’ve always been obsessed with barber shops – visually. Since I picked up my first Canon FTB as a 14-year-old, I’ve taken photos of barber shops and long admired photos of this subject by Walker Evans, Russell Lee, and Berenice Abbott. The barber came outside when he saw me photographing the exterior. After I shot a few pictures, he started flirting with me, so I hightailed it out of there.

 

Bar and Restaurant with No Name, 161 Lafayette Street

While I didn’t note where this dive bar was, it is right next to the shot of the Barber in his shop photo on the same negative strip. I confirmed through some sleuth work that it was indeed at 161 Lafayette Street. When I first posted this photo on Instagram, I found out that Baby Grand Karaoke Bar occupied the space, but that business has since moved to 187 Orchard and 29 W 17^th Street.

 

A. Zito & Sons Bakery, 259 Bleecker Street

While photographing the wonderful bakery, I experienced a magical moment in time. Charlie Zito, whose family bakery provided locals with crusty Italian bread for decades before it became fashionable, saw me taking pictures and hammed it up in the window!

Antonio and Josefina Zito emigrated to NYC from Palermo, Sicily in 1914. They opened their first bakery on West Broadway in 1919, relocated a short time later to Sullivan Street, and moved to 259 Bleecker Street in December 1924, where they lived in a rear apartment. One of my favorite photographers of all time, Berenice Abbott, took her famous picture of A. Zito & Sons on February 3, 1937, with loaves of bread selling for a mere 5 cents due to fierce competition.

Charlie’s nephew Anthony managed this beloved Village bakery until it closed on May 30, 2004, after 85 years in business, 80 of which were on Bleecker Street.

 

White Rose Bar, 803 Sixth Avenue

Although White Rose bars have vanished, they once graced different neighborhoods of NYC. I was able to track down locations at Whitehall and Front Streets, Fulton Street, 803 Sixth Avenue, and near Madison Square Park.

Apparently, White Rose was one of Joan Didion’s favorite haunts. I did a lot of sleuth work and while I couldn’t find anything on Kruger Optical, I think this White Rose was the one on Sixth Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets.

 

Terminal Café and Bar, Port Authority

Opened in 1958, the Terminal Bar was located across from the nearly as sleazy and perennially dirty Port Authority. While it originally catered to tough, brawling Irish-American guys, pimps, and prostitutes, the bar began to attract primarily gay black men, many of whom died from AIDS. Hard to believe when you look at the New York Times building, that this corner was once home to a bar that symbolized the gritty underbelly of NYC.

Owned by Murray Goldman, the Terminal Bar and its patrons were documented by his son-in-law Shelly Nadelman who bartended there for 10 years until the bar closed in 1982, due to an increase in rent. The neon sign was also captured in nighttime cruising scenes in the film Taxi Driver.

 

Mayfair Room Bar, 169 W. 47th Street

I knew this dive bar was in the vicinity of Times Square, but some astute New Yorkers helped confirm its location when I posted the photo on my Instagram page in April 2022. Apparently, it existed back in 1940, but not certain when the building was demolished for the current high rise.

 

Times Square Fast Food Joint, West 47th Street

This is one of several photos I took of this fast food restaurant on 47th Street near Times Square. it was included in my NYC photography exhibit when i lived in Rotterdam in the early 1980s.

 

December 1977

 Hop Kee, 21 Mott Street, Chinatown

 When I photographed this restaurant back in 1977, it had only been open for nine years. It’s still going strong and is one of the last authentic Cantonese American restaurants in NYC. Of course, Lonnie’s Coffee Shop is long gone.

 

Howard Johnson’s and Porn, 1551 Broadway, Times Square

By the 1950s, Howard Johnson’s were all across the U.S., offering hearty and wholesome food to middle-class Americans. This Times Square location (one of three) opened in 1955 and miraculously outlived the others until July 8, 2005. Ironically, above the restaurant that epitomized apple pie wholesomeness resided a series of tawdry sex clubs.

The Orpheum Dance Palace closed down in 1964 for prostitution. The New Paris took over and later split into two spaces, one of which housed a small non-porn theater. When I took this photo, the Burlesk sign was crumbling, but the gay male burlesque Gaiety Theatre was thriving. Less seedy and shady than other gay clubs in the area, it opened in late 1975 and closed in March 2005.

 

25 Cent Peep Show

These dive peep shows were a dime a dozen in the 1970s. Matty “The Horse” Ianniello. Ianello was an American mobster with the NYC Genovese crime family. Ianniello helped transform Times Square into the dingy world capital of peep shows in the 1960s and 1970s.