Vintage Photograph of a Sanitation Worker's Nightmare in Harlem, 1948

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A nightmare for the city’s sanitation workers and mysophobes as The Times reported that a “survey of the areas flanking the New York Central Railroad elevated structure along Park Avenue, where Harlem merges with the Upper East Side, revealed side street conditions even more foul than those that can be seen daily by thousands of railroad travelers.” The commissioner of housing and buildings, fretting about a citywide problem of accumulating refuse, said it was “almost unbelievable what piles up overnight.””
A nightmare for the city’s sanitation workers and mysophobes as The Times reported that a “survey of the areas flanking the New York Central Railroad elevated structure along Park Avenue, where Harlem merges with the Upper East Side, revealed side street conditions even more foul than those that can be seen daily by thousands of railroad travelers.” The commissioner of housing and buildings, fretting about a citywide problem of accumulating refuse, said it was “almost unbelievable what piles up overnight.””
Photo: Arthur Brower/The New York Times
(photo back)
(photo back)
Photo: Arthur Brower/The New York Times

The Lively Morgue is a daily photo blog from the New York Times in which an original photo from the newspaper's archives is reposted along with tidbits of information gleaned from the historical article it accompanied. Along with a rescan of the original photograph, the backs of each photo are also scanned, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the editorial process of one of the world's best newspapers.

Today's post features a photo from September 1st, 1948, of Harlem and it's growing mountains of trash piled in the areas surrounding the Elevated Rail.

A nightmare for the city’s sanitation workers and mysophobes as The Times reported that a “survey of the areas flanking the New York Central Railroad elevated structure along Park Avenue, where Harlem merges with the Upper East Side, revealed side street conditions even more foul than those that can be seen daily by thousands of railroad travelers.” The commissioner of housing and buildings, fretting about a citywide problem of accumulating refuse, said it was “almost unbelievable what piles up overnight.””

via The Lively Morgue

Matt Coneybeare

Matt Coneybeare

Editor in Chief

Matt enjoys exploring the City's with his partner and son. He is an avid marathon runner, and spends most of his time eating, running, and working on cool stuff.

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Dec. 18, 1969: A neglected block in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where a nationwide Model Cities program — which aimed to bring a holistic improvement regimen to selected neighborhoods in 52 cities — was seen as stumbling. “Half of the program’s first year is gone,” The Times reported, “but only $7.7 million of the year’s allocation of $29 million in Federal funds have been spent.” The mayor blamed a heavy-footed city bureaucracy. “The mood is typified by Prospect Place in Brownsville, flanked by desolate acres of rubble-strewn lots,” the story read. “Rotted tenements have been torn down, but almost nothing is being built because contractors’ bids have come in above the per-room cost ceilings permitted by Congress for Federal projects.”
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