New York City in the 1970s had graffiti-covered subway cars, closed-down amusement rides and very little money in the city budget. It also had crowded parks, ferries and busy squares. Most of these vintage photos come from the U.S. National Archives and date from 1973 and 1974. They show both sides, one neighborhood at a time.
Updated October 27, 2026.
Have you ever wondered what life was like in New York City in the 1970s? Here are some people, places, and sights that will give you an idea of whether life in the Big Apple was different back then…or if some things never change! You decide as you view these vintage photos of New York City in the 1970s.
Most of us have looked at an old family photo and spotted something in the background that nobody noticed at the time. City photos work the same way, so look past the main subject.
A few clues explain most city photographs from this period. The paint on a train car tells you the date. The crowd tells you the neighborhood. The closed ride or the empty lot tells you what the city could not afford to fix. Each section below adds the dates and numbers behind the picture. If you like this kind of time travel, see what flying in the 1970s looked like too.
New York Subway in the 1970s
New York City’s first official subway opened on October 27, 1904, and cost a nickel to ride. The first line ran 9.1 miles from City Hall to 145th Street in Harlem. By the 1970s the system was at what one history calls an all-time low. Annual ridership dropped from 1,258 million in 1970 to 1,054 million in 1975, a fall of 16.2%. Graffiti and crime were all over the system. This was the “Subway Graffiti Era.” The city was in a budget crisis and did not have the money to fight both the paint and the pickpocketing, muggings and fare dodging that came with it. Anyone who has ridden a crowded train at rush hour knows the feeling of being packed in with strangers, and that part is probably the same today.
Police Scooters in 1970s New York
Around the early 1970s, the New York Police Department bought a large fleet of Innocenti Italian scooters to patrol the city streets. They were painted dark green and white, the NYPD colors at the time. Later the Italian scooters were replaced with Spanish scooters painted blue and white, the version most people link with the NYPD. One of these is now in the New York Police Museum. Around 1976 or 77 the department switched again, this time to the Vespa Sprint. Vespa later pulled out of the US market. The NYPD kept the scooters running as long as it could, but they are no longer practical for the police to use.
The Brooklyn Bridge in June 1974
The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed and suspension bridge. It crosses the East River between Manhattan Island and Brooklyn on Long Island. When it opened on May 24, 1883, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, with a main span of 1,595.5 feet. Elevated trains stopped using it in March 1944 and the trolley tracks closed in March 1950, so now it carries cars, bicycles, and people on foot only. It has been a major tourist attraction since it opened and is an icon of New York City. It was named a National Historic Landmark on January 29, 1964.
Plumb Beach, Brooklyn, May 1973
Plumb Beach (sometimes spelled “Plum”) is a beach and neighborhood along the north shore of Rockaway Inlet in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Since 1972 it has been part of Gateway National Recreation Area. Congress created that park under Public Law 92-592 on October 27, 1972. Unfortunately, the area is known to be a somewhat dangerous late-night spot.
New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street
The New Amsterdam Theater is at 214 West 42nd Street in the Theater District of Manhattan, off Times Square. It opened on October 26, 1903. The outside is Beaux-Arts style and the inside is Art Nouveau, two fancy older building styles. Both were named New York City Landmarks on October 23, 1979. The theater was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 10, 1980. Its last live show was in January 1937. It reopened as a movie theater on July 3, 1937 and ran until about 1982 or 1983, showing kung fu films in its final years. Disney leased and renovated it from 1995 to 1997. It is one of the oldest surviving Broadway venues. The photo above dates from 1985, a few years after the 1970s, but it shows the building as the decade left it.
Coney Island in 1973
In 1973, a group of kids climbed through a broken fence to play on the abandoned “Giant Slide” at Coney Island. The intruders had the abandoned “Parachute Jump” ride nearby at their disposal, as well! Amusement parks were built here in the late 1800s and drew their biggest crowds in the first half of the 1900s. After World War II the crowds dwindled and years of neglect followed. Steeplechase Park closed for good after the 1964 season. The Parachute Jump stopped running the same year. It is a 250-foot tower that opened in 1941 after the Tilyou family bought it from the 1939 World’s Fair. New York made it a city landmark in 1977, but the Board of Estimate overturned that about three months later. It reached the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Various redevelopment projects were proposed during the 1970s through the 2000s, but most were not carried out. The area finally came back to life in 2001 with the opening of the minor league ballpark, now called Maimonides Park, which has 6,500 seats. Almost everyone has a place from childhood that got closed or rebuilt, and it is strange to see one frozen in a photo.
Jamaica Bay in 1973
Jamaica Bay is a partly man-made, partly natural estuary (a spot where river water meets the sea) on the southern part of the western tip of Long Island. The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge covers about 9,155 acres of saltmarshes, freshwater ponds, fields, and woods. An estimated 365 bird species had been identified there as of 2018. It is one of the largest bird habitats in the northeastern United States and is a great place to watch seasonal bird migrations, as well as birds that live there all year. Planning began in 1938 under Parks commissioner Robert Moses. Groundbreaking came in 1950 and the first phase was finished in 1953. The site became part of the National Park Service in 1972 when the Gateway National Recreation Area was established.
The Staten Island Ferry in 1973
The Staten Island Ferry is a passenger ferry route run by the New York City Department of Transportation. Steamboat service began in 1817. The route now runs 5.2 miles between Whitehall Terminal in Manhattan and St. George Terminal on Staten Island, a crossing of about 25 minutes. Boats leave every 15 to 20 minutes at peak hours and every 30 minutes otherwise. The ride became free in July 1997. The city says the ferry carries about 22 million passengers a year. It is popular with commuters, and with tourists and visitors because of the views of New York Harbor and the lower Manhattan skyline. Night service ended on July 1, 1975, during the city’s money crisis, and returned in the 1980s.
Sheepshead Bay in 1973
Sheepshead Bay is a neighborhood in southern Brooklyn, named for an edible fish found in the bay’s waters. Jewish and Soviet immigrants settled in the area in the late 20th century. By 1979 it was a more racially diverse neighborhood with an increasingly elderly population. The city changed its zoning rules in the 1970s to encourage shops and housing along the waterfront.
East River Park in 1974
East River Park, at its largest, was a 57.5-acre public park on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It ran along the East River from Montgomery Street to 12th Street on the east side of FDR Drive. It had football, baseball, and soccer fields; tennis, basketball, and handball courts; a running track; bike paths; and places to fish. In December 2001, the park was renamed John V. Lindsay East River Park to honor the city’s 103rd Mayor. He served from 1966 to 1973, a difficult time of social and political unrest. Lindsay’s efforts to maintain racial harmony are credited with sparing the city the worst of the riots that hit other large US cities in the late 1960s. The park is being rebuilt eight to ten feet higher as part of a $1.45 billion flood-protection project approved in December 2019. Demolition began in December 2021.
Union Square in 1973
Union Square is a historic intersection and neighborhood in Manhattan. It sits where Broadway and the former Bowery Road (now Fourth Ave.) came together in the early 19th century. It is a popular meeting place because it is central and many subway routes are nearby. There are lots of bars and restaurants around the edges of the square, which keeps it lively. In 1976 the Council on the Environment of New York City, now GrowNYC, started the Greenmarket program. It gave small, family farmers the chance to sell vegetables, fruits, and other farm-fresh products at outdoor markets. The first Greenmarket had seven farmers, and their goods sold out by noon.
Herald Square in 1973
Herald Square is a major shopping and business center in Midtown Manhattan, where Broadway, Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), and 34th Street meet. It was named for the long-gone New York Herald newspaper, which used to have its headquarters there. The best-known store is Macy’s Herald Square, the company’s main department store and the largest Macy’s in the United States. Free items are sometimes given out to bring customers in when new stores open in the area. Most of us have stood in a long line for a giveaway and wondered halfway through whether it was worth the wait. And anyone who has sat in city traffic knows how the frustrated driver in the photo feels.
The RKO Bushwick Theatre in Brooklyn
The RKO Bushwick Theatre opened on September 11, 1911. It was once Brooklyn’s largest and most magnificent vaudeville theater, a place for stage shows with lots of different acts, with seating for 2500 people. During its best years in the 1920s and 1930s, the theatre featured the biggest vaudeville acts and headliners of the time, including Ethel Barrymore and Lillie Langtry. By the 1970s the theatre had fallen on hard times and was turned into a church known as Pilgrim Baptist Cathedral. When the church later left the building, it slowly fell into disrepair. Today, the front wall of the theatre is all that remains. It has been kept as part of the Acorn High School for Justice building, which was built in 2004.
Lynch Park, Brooklyn, in 1974
Latin youths at Lynch Park in Brooklyn, June 1974. This inner-city area has historically been populated by African Americans, Hispanics, and low income Caucasians.
The Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1974
Brooklyn businessmen set up the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute in 1853. It was renamed the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1889. In 1973 both schools were in financial trouble. New York State arranged a deal in which Polytechnic took over NYU’s engineering faculty, programs and students, forming the Polytechnic Institute of New York. It became Polytechnic University in 1985 and affiliated with NYU in 2008. It has been the NYU Tandon School of Engineering since 2015. The photo shows fires that were set in June, 1974 to test wires and insulation in NYC.
Kosciusko Pool in Bedford-Stuyvesant
The City of New York bought property in 1968 to give people in Bedford-Stuyvesant more open space and to build this community pool. Kosciusko Public Swimming Pool then went through repairs from 1994 to 2000. The work rebuilt the electrical system, renovated the machinery, rebuilt the pool and parts of the concrete decks, improved the bathhouse, added an alarm system, and made other repairs to the buildings. The renovation cost over $2 million.
New York City in the 1970s FAQ
What was New York City like in the 1970s?
The city was in a budget crisis, and it showed. Subway ridership fell from 1,258 million in 1970 to 1,054 million in 1975. Graffiti covered the cars. Night service on the Staten Island Ferry ended on July 1, 1975. Parks, beaches and squares stayed busy, as the photos above show.
When did the Staten Island Ferry become free?
The fare was dropped in July 1997 under the MTA’s one-city, one-fare transfer plan. The ferry has run since 1817, when the Richmond Turnpike Company began steamboat service. The city now says it moves about 22 million passengers a year between Whitehall in Manhattan and St. George on Staten Island.
What happened to the Coney Island Parachute Jump?
The 250-foot Parachute Jump opened in 1941 after the Tilyou family bought it from the 1939 World’s Fair. It stopped running in 1964 when Steeplechase Park closed. It was too costly to tear down, so it stayed standing. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and is the only structure left from the original park.
When did the Union Square Greenmarket start?
It started in 1976. The Council on the Environment of New York City, now GrowNYC, set it up so small family farmers could sell directly to city shoppers. The first market had seven farmers, and their goods sold out by noon. Today it runs year-round on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.