Toronto, The Macmillan Company, 1969
Danny Lyon made the photographs in The Destruction of Lower Manhattan following a commission from The New York State Council of the Arts to document the levelling of one of the city's oldest and most historic neighbourhoods.
In his introduction, Lyon writes: 'I came to see these buildings as fossils of a time past. These buildings were used during the Civil War. The men were all dead but, but the buildings were still here, left behind as the city grew around them... For a hundred years they have stood in the darkness and the day. In the morning the sun has shined on their one side, and in the evening on another. Now, in the end, they are visited by Demolition men... risking their lives for $5.50 an hour, pulling apart brick by brick and beam by beam, the work of other American workers who once stood on the same walls and held the same bricks, then new, so long ago.'
First edition; 4to (267 x 233 mm, 10½ x 9¼ in); black-and-white photographs and text by Danny Lyon; plain endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in silver on spine and upper side, lightly rubbed, light fading to top edge, top corners pushed, slightly shaken, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, black, text in white and blue, light toning to spine, rubbing and marking to sides, wear to extremities, occasional laminate lifting as often, an excellent copy; [160]pp.
In his introduction, Lyon writes: 'I came to see these buildings as fossils of a time past. These buildings were used during the Civil War. The men were all dead but, but the buildings were still here, left behind as the city grew around them... For a hundred years they have stood in the darkness and the day. In the morning the sun has shined on their one side, and in the evening on another. Now, in the end, they are visited by Demolition men... risking their lives for $5.50 an hour, pulling apart brick by brick and beam by beam, the work of other American workers who once stood on the same walls and held the same bricks, then new, so long ago.'
First edition; 4to (267 x 233 mm, 10½ x 9¼ in); black-and-white photographs and text by Danny Lyon; plain endpapers, black cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in silver on spine and upper side, lightly rubbed, light fading to top edge, top corners pushed, slightly shaken, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, black, text in white and blue, light toning to spine, rubbing and marking to sides, wear to extremities, occasional laminate lifting as often, an excellent copy; [160]pp.
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