[PotatoHeadMick]

Some of the commenters on the site say NYC remained the same up until the late 1960’s. Can anyone with a knowledge of the city say if that is true?

If so it must have been a huge and very sudden change to go from this to the ghastly place which was the site of so many grim TV cop shows and movies in the mid 1970’s.

I suspect the transformation must have taken longer than that.

[Disambiguator]

Some of the commenters on the site say NYC remained the same up until the late 1960’s

Guess what happened in the mid-1960s? Hint: Lyndon Johnson and his magic legislation.

[Rome2000]

I remember NYC subway cars with straw back seats and Chiclet machines on the platforms.

No graffiti either.

Also remember hanging out in neighborhoods in NYC where the stores didn't have riot gates up until the mid '70's, in that era there were still soda counters at drugstores and pizza cost 35 cents a slice.

Then came the CPUSA and the domestic marxists.

Their offspring are running DC now.

[buccaneer81]

Like so many other large cities, the turning point was 1965:

1965

Watts riots.

Ted Kennedy's third world immigration legislation passed.

Great Society programs passed.

[YankeeReb]

Some of the commenters on the site say NYC remained the same up until the late 1960’s. Can anyone with a knowledge of the city say if that is true?

If so it must have been a huge and very sudden change to go from this to the ghastly place which was the site of so many grim TV cop shows and movies in the mid 1970’s.

I suspect the transformation must have taken longer than that.

I don't remember NYC much before the mid 70s, but I remember it being pretty bad then. If it's true that the city was like the pictures up until the early 60s, it would seem that LBJ and the Great Society had something to do with the down hill spiral.

[Roccus]

Most of the pictures of tenements were on the Lower East Side. The demographic changed there drastically in the 60s. The waterfront changed around that same time also, due to the loss of shipping. The fight over containerization vs bulk cargo spelled the deathknell for Manhattan as a major cargo port. The advent of commercial jet travel killed the passenger ship business. The flight to suburbia with the attendant rise in auto ownership killed the ferries. People took the bridges and tunnels to cross the East and Hudson rivers.

As to what you saw on TV and in the movies, always remember, Hollywood is the land of make believe.

[muawiyah]

New York is a tad different than all other cities. You can actually go out on the public streets at night near a postal facility and not be in fear for your life.

It's been 24 hours for over a century. it still is. There are people on the streets doing stuff. Buildings work. Things happen.

[Roccus]

Something else that changed around that time was the tug/railroad car/barge traffic in the harbor. Trucks took over that last leg of the journey from the mainland to Manhattan and Long Island.

[jocon307]

“If so it must have been a huge and very sudden change...”

It was potato, see my post #57. It was shocking and quite noticeable even to a kid who was 7 or 8 in 1965. And then it just kept getting worse.

[decimon]

The change in NYC in the 1960s was rapid. But the entire country changed not long after. Why? Rapid demographic shift. Suddenly we had half the population of the U.S. under 25 years old. And that explains the ‘60s era and what’s followed.