Street play

Martha Cooper's photos take us through the Alphabet City of the late 70s as the area was about to undergo extensive urban renewal -- a process that is still continuing today. At the time, the neighborhood had more than its share of drug dealers and petty criminals, and the landscape seemed ugly and forbidding. But to the children who grew up there, the abandoned buildings and rubble-strewn lots made perfect playgrounds, providing raw materials and open space for unsupervised play. A crumbling tenement housed a secret clubhouse, rooftops became private aviaries, and a pile of trash might be a source for treasure.