Join me for a trip through the island of memories. Was New York a better place to live way back when? Not if you were actually there. But Manhattan has always had its passionate adherents. These snaps of the city by Alexander Alland are how I remember the urban noir of the city in the ’30s, though they were taken years before my birth. Still, my earliest memories are preserved in luminous black and white.
How could you not love swimming in the East River (when it was a little cleaner)?
How could you not love Broadway and Times Square at nighttime, all lit up in neon?
How could you not love Times Square in the daytime when the trolleys were modern?
How could you not love browsing through the bookstore bins on lower 4th Avenue between 13th and 9th?
How could you not love the Lower East Side, if not its cold water flats, then its vernacular signs?
How could you not love the frequent protest marches that gathered steam as they swung through Greenwich Village?
How could you not love strolling down Fifth Avenue at the corner of 42nd Street—with 104 traffic signals crowned with a 17-inch bronze statue of Mercury?
How could you not love the array of pawn shops, SROs and cheap flop-houses on the Bowery?
How could you not love the 5 cent cake and coffee at a greasy spoon on the Lower East Side?
How could you not love the elevated subway lines running on serpentine tracks throughout the city?
How could you not love having an aquarium an easy walk from the subway?
How can you not love the architectural details that dot the city in places you’d never expect to find them?
The post The Daily Heller: How Can You Not Love New York? appeared first on PRINT Magazine.