Skid Row: 1937

http://reedproperties.net/index.php?album=the-turner-building-located-at...

from pictures from 1937 since I was born in August that year. I picture my mother as a pregnant young woman living in those times.

Same building, I believe:

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The building is still there, and has been renovated into a rather attractive office complex. Not skid row any more!

I can't help but notice the men may be on Skid Row, but are still neatly dressed as possible. The couple in the car passing at right seems to be studiously ignoring them. Finally, I presume the sign across the street says Turner Hardware and -- but can't conclude what the last word might be.

["Hardware & Implement Co." - Dave]

The NYC Skid Row was the Bowery, essentially the southern (downtown) end of Third Avenue. To this day it attracts guys and some women that are down on their luck. It is however, like many parts of the big cities, being gentrified. Expensive condo apartment houses were built, a few are being built and others planned. The ailing economy slowed it down but it still manages to survive. The Modesto inhabitants look much cleaner and better groomed than the Bowery flophouse denizens -- mainly drunks, junkies and mentally ill people. Ms. Lange's 1937 subjects look like university faculty members compared to the Bowery people of the 1940s and '50s that I remember.