The Bronx is Burning
(Photo credit: FDNY Photo Unit) Buildings in the Bronx were burned and abandoned in the 1970s.
The Bronx is Burning is the final episode of Shoe Leather Season 2
Shoe Leather is an investigative podcast that digs up stories from New York City’s past to find out how yesterday’s news affects us today.
In season two, New York Drop Dead, reporters step back into the 1970s. They go beyond the bell bottoms and disco to explore what made this decade notorious in New York’s history. A decade in which the Big Apple went by a far more sinister nickname — Fear City. The city was broken and broke. When city officials asked the federal government for a bailout — President Gerald Ford told them they were on their own. The next day the New York Daily News ran the now infamous frontpage headline – Ford to City: Drop Dead.
Episode: The Bronx is Burning
During the 1970s, the Bronx was burning. Fires and abandonment destroyed over 80 percent of the South Bronx housing stock, making it look like a bombed-out city during World War II. What exactly caused this? Some blamed its residents, while others blamed the landlords.
In 1975, Gelvin Stevenson, a Bronx economist and journalist tried to sound the alarm by telling the story of one building on one boulevard that once promised the American Dream — but then succumbed to abandonment; Roosevelt Gardens on the Grand Concourse.
In this episode, we investigate the toxic mix of invisible factors that turned the Bronx into a tinderbox.