NYC Photos 1980s and Beyond

Here are photographs of places in New York that inspired the setting of Wrong Hand Right, some of which no longer exist.

1980s NYC Subway Graffiti

76 Duane Street - Finnegan Alger’s Loft Building

Tilted Arc, Richard Serra (1981)

Tilted Arc was a 120-foot-long by sculpture Richard Serra displayed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan from 1981 to 1989. Following an acrimonious public debate, the unfished steel sculpture was removed in 1989 as the result of a federal lawsuit and has never been publicly displayed since, in accordance with the artist's wishes.

For Serra, an important part of the work's meaning was that it would interact with the commuter passing through the plaza, a location usually passed through quickly on the way to somewhere else. The sculpture was from the start controversial and the United States General Services Administration soon sought to remove it. But Serra designed Tilted Arc to be counterintuitive, to "redefine" the space in which it existed, and due to this intimate relationship between the location and the meaning of the work it could not exist as a piece of humane art unless it remained in that exact location within the Foley Plaza. Therefore, Serra said that by removing the physical steel sculpture, the government would destroy the broader work, regardless of its physical existence. In 1986, Serra sued to enjoin the removal of "Tilted Arc," launching the lawsuit considered the most notorious public sculpture controversy in the history of art law. Serra sought to enjoin the office from violating an oral agreement not to remove the sculpture from Federal Plaza, and claimed that removal of "Tilted Arc" constituted a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech and Fifth Amendment right to due process. The federal district court rejected Serra's claims, and the Second Circuit affirmed this decision.

Tilted Arc was moved in three sections to a government parking lot in Brooklyn and then to a storage space in Maryland. it will likely never again be erected since it is Serra's wish that it will never be displayed anywhere other than its original location.[15] Serra has stated that the case exemplifies the U.S. legal system's preference toward capitalistic property rights over democratic freedom of expression.

Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc#cite_note-Serra_vs._US_GSA-13

The Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building, located on Duane Street overlooking the former location of Tilted Arc in Foley Square, is the location of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York filed office. Under Donal Trump’s second administrations, the 10th floor is used a s a detention center for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and is surrounded by police barricades. This block of Duane Street is now closed to traffic.

The World War II East Coast Memorial, Battery Park

he World War II East Coast Memorial is located in Battery Park, New York City. This memorial commemorates those soldiers, sailors, Marines, coast guardsmen, merchant mariners and airmen who met their deaths in the service of their country in the western waters of the Atlantic Ocean during World War II. Its axis is oriented on the Statue of Liberty. On each side of the axis are four gray granite pylons upon which are inscribed the name, rank, organization, and state of each of the over 4,600 missing in the waters of the Atlantic. For names where an individual’s remains have subsequently been accounted for by the U.S. Department of Defense, a rosette is placed next to the name on the memorial to indicate that the person now rests in a known gravesite.

The memorial, located in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, was designed by Gehron & Seltzer of New York and consists of eight, gray granite pylons. Four are on each side of the center axis of the memorial. This axis is aligned with the Statue of Liberty, located just two miles south. The pylons include the name, rank, organization and state of the more than 4,600 American servicemen who were lost at sea or missing in action in the western waters of the Atlantic Ocean during World War II. Near the landward end of the memorial area is a bronze eagle 18 feet high, symbolically placing a wreath upon the waters of the Atlantic. Designed by Albino Manca of New York, the eagle weighs about five tons and rests upon a black granite base. The memorial was dedicated by President John F. Kennedy on May 23, 1963.

https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/about-east-coast-memorial/

The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 American film noir written and directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart as detective San Spade, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. The movie is a remake of a 1931 film, both based on the 1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett. The film premiered in New York City and was an immediate success, eventually becoming one for the first 25 firms selected in 1989 by the Library of Congress to be included in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

The Amateur Comedy Club

The Amateur Comedy Club is a gentlemen’s club that has performed theatrical productions every year since its founding in 1884. These productions have been presented since 1919 at the clubhouse, a landmarked building located on Sniffen Court in Manhattan, exclusively for club members and their guests.

Scribner’s Bookstore

Scribner’s Bookstore opened in 1913 in the street level of the Charles Scribner’s Sons Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The upper stories contain offices, including some

space initially used by the Scribner's publishing company in publishing the works of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, and the offices of their esteemed editor, Maxwell Perkins.

The building’s facade contains a glass-and-iron storefront on its lowest two stories with black and gold decoration. The Beaux Arts architecture dictated its arched windows, arched and pediment doors, classical details, symmetry, sculptures and murals. On the third through ninth stories, the facade is subdivided into five limestone bays while at the tenth story is a mansard roof.

The architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock in 1921characterized the building as containing by "the grandest, interior space that had been created in New York", akin to that of Grand Central Terminal.

While the interior of the retail store was designated as a landmark In 1989, the venerable bookstore was that year converted into a Brentano’s bookstore, and in 1996 into the US flagship clothing store of Benetton, in 2017 became a Sephora cosmetics store and then briefly a Lululemon clothing store. The building was sold at auction in May 2025 .

Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Scribner%27s_Sons_Building#cite_note-nyt19740407-26

Raccoon Lodge

Raccoon Lodge was a bar located on Warren Street in Tribeca for 35 years. It was known for its its unpretentious décor filled with knick-knacks and a pool table, and its loyal band of regulars. The bar closed in 2016, after which the building was torn down to make way for a high-rise apartment building.

Thrillist. https://www.thrillist.com/news/trib ecas-raccoon-lodge-is-closing-its-doors-for-good

NYC Photos 1980s and Beyond

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