OAK AND NEW CHAMBERS STREETS
OCTOBER 27, 1935. ABBOTT FILE 17

In the first month of the project, Abbott photographed this working-class neighborhood, tucked behind the massive bulk of the Municipal Building. The formal dignity of the civic center pales beside the vitality of ordinary life: the bold advertisements and St. Vincent's Festival decorations--especially the light bulbs suspended from curlicued armatures--enliven the streetscape and dominate the composition. A tall ladder for adjusting light bulbs masks the Gothic spire of the Woolworth Building, one of the city's most renowned "cathedrals of commerce." In Henry Street, taken a month later, Abbott shows these monumental buildings looming authoritatively over uniform rows of humble tenements.

Oak and New Chambers Streets no longer exist. Cleared in 1959, the area remained undeveloped until the 1970s, as community groups and city government haggled over the expansion of the civic center. During the 1970s, the firm of Gruzen & Partners devised a complex of new buildings--police headquarters, courthouse annex, United States Attorney's office, correction center, and business high school--that were architecturally unified and largely closed to traffic. Although praised by critics, the complex is completely isolated from the hubbub of the streets. The spirit of everyday life, so skillfully captured in Abbott's photograph, has been sacrificed to public grandeur.

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