When the City Was a House of Horrors

In the late 1970s and early 1980s New York as a whole resembled a haunted house. The photographer John Conn spent those years documenting the subway system — which is to say, the dungeon in the haunted house’s basement.

via Lens Blog: https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/when-the-city-was-a-house-of-horrors/

The late 1970s and early 1980s — when buildings were burning, fiscal crises were raging and the Dead Boys were playing at CBGB — were a macabre time in New York City’s history, a period when it could be said that the city resembled a haunted house.