Demolition Men's Headquarters, 38 Ferry Street

Series Title: The Destruction of Lower Manhattan

Demolition Men's Headquarters, 38 Ferry Street

1966–67

Danny Lyon

(American, 1942-)

Culture

America

Medium

gelatin silver print

Measurements

Image: 30.9 x 24.4 cm (12 3/16 x 9 5/8 in.); Paper: 35.5 x 27.7 cm (14 x 10 7/8 in.); Matted: 50.4 x 40.2 cm (19 13/16 x 15 13/16 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of George Stephanopoulos 2013.138

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Description

In his book The Destruction of Lower Manhattan, Lyon described the demolition men, or “housewreckers,” as “Slavs, Italians, blacks from the South, American workers of 1967 drinking pop-top soda on their beams at lunchtime, risking their lives for $5.50 an hour, pulling apart brick by brick and beam by beam the work of other American workers who once stood on the same walls and held the same bricks, then new, so long ago.”