top of page
Anchor 1
March -- July 2020
New York in the time of coronavirus
A strangely transformed universe of empty streets and office buildings, vacant airports and train stations, shuttered schools, darkened theaters, closed restaurants and diners, and padlocked playgrounds and dog parks
June 12, 2020: Pell Street in Chinatown on Manhattan's Lower East Side (above). The neighborhood is usually packed on Friday nights in the spring, but not this time. Doyers Street, just off Pell, also looks forlorn.
June 16, 2020: Vesey Street, a crucial part of Lower Manhattan's usually frenzied financial district, as another work day wraps up.
June 13, 2020: With restaurants and diners closed during the pandemic, food delivery guys are now hometown heroes. Night after night they bring food fast and dependably to New Yorkers who have few other options.
​
Grand Central Terminal in mid-March 2020, just as the coronavirus lockdown was starting. On a normal workday the station accommodates about 250,000 riders. The quarantine has turned that daily flood of humanity into a trickle.
March 23, 2020: The Oculus on the rebuilt World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. When the quarantine began, ridership on the New York-New Jersey PATH train fell from 21,000 daily passengers in March to 4,730 in May.
March 18, 2020: Broadway Junction, Brooklyn: Not exactly the familiar jammed platforms at this key subway station bordering Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York. The City website says an analysis of turnstile data at more than 450 stations citywide shows entries had already plummeted 33 percent by mid-March.
​
​
May 27, 2020: Silent spring. Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan
May 15, 2020: Social distancing becomes a thing.
June 20, 2020: Social distancing remains a thing.
From the Astoria, Queens N train platform
July 17, 2020: Crowds remain remarkably thin on a business day in the Times Square subway station, the city's busiest.
bottom of page