Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Before and After - 42nd Street


Here is a picture of the Lyric (left) and the Victory (center) theaters on Manhattan's famed 42nd Street - circa 1976. Top picture from the great blog - Lost City.

And here are the same two theaters sometime in 2008...


The Lyric (left) has been renamed The Hilton Theater (it featured "Young Frankenstein" last year), and the "New Victory" (with the fancy new steps) now specializes in childrens productions. If those walls could talk, can you imagine the stories they'd tell?

This block of 42nd Street (between Broadway and 8th Avenues) was one of the only places in Manhattan that made me uncomfortable when I first moved here in the early 90's. Its seediness was overwhelming. Now? Not so much...

3 comments:

Big Mark 243 said...

What a transformation!! Would love it to happen to my hometown, but I don't know if enough folks really want something like that to happen.

Joy said...

Was that part of Rudy's clean-up campaign? Or what?

Beth said...

I kind of prefer the way it looks in the older picture, but you know I'm all about the retro. :) XOXO Beth

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...