Langdon Clay: 42nd Street, 1979

The gritty neon charm of New York's Times Square from the 1970s to today

Langdon Clay (born 1949) recalls the drab and dusty mood in New York City at the end of the 1970s: the once-exciting political sea change wrought by the Vietnam War and the Haight-Ashbury drug experiments had given way to a sense of apathy, intensified by the aftermath of an oil crises and the omnipresent Cold War. The particular stretch of 42nd Street between 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue had now shifted from the glorious home of gilded movie palaces to the shadowy site of porn theaters which many saw as the area's ruin. Yet here, real estate moguls saw the potential to transform the heart of Manhattan into a mecca of tourism, framed by skyscrapers and shaped by commerce and fast pleasures. "It was with this coming change written on every wall that I sought to record for posterity that famous block between 7th and 8th Avenues," says Clay. "My only regret is that I didn't do the south side of the street."
New York 42nd Street: North Side 1979/2011/2023 captures Clay's 1979 photos of a quintessential strip of 42nd street. More recent photographs from 2011 and 2023 show the striking contrast of its commercial renovation, turning this offshoot of Times Square into a Vegas-style Disneyfied hub for theater concoctions that we know today.