Demolition Men's Headquarters, 38 Ferry Street America, 20th century

The Destruction of Lower Manhattan

Demolition Men's Headquarters, 38 Ferry Street

1966–67

Danny Lyon

(American, 1942-)

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.)

Gift of George Stephanopoulos 2013.138

Location: not on view

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

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.”