AS MENTIONED in an earlier post, I discovered some long-lost slides taken of New York in September 1969. I was on my way home to Australia to be married after spending a wonderful year in Toronto. I was due to fly out in a week, so my brother and I took a whirlwind tour of New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC.
I had long mourned the loss of these slides which I thought had been swept up in some over-zealous house cleaning exercise. So you can imagine my delight when last year I discovered them in a dusty old box. (Memo to myself: dust more regularly.) Thank goodness for modern technology. I was able to scan them through my colour printer and I admit to spending endless hours pouring over them, marvelling at the fashion and at the vehicles.
These two display windows were in the Rockefeller Centre. You can tell I was a dressmaker's daughter - I had to take a photo of the latest Singer Sewing Machine for my mother to drool over. Such modern technology!
Time for a quick Breakfast at Tiffany's pose. Ah, good to recall that I was a Magazine Queen even back then. My arm to this day automatically goes into magazine carrying mode.
I don't know if Jack Dempsey's Restaurant still exists. Oh, what a shame. I just Googled it and discovered it closed in 1974. Anyway, my brother Anthony and I had a great meal there one evening. I swear they served up a whole side of beef on the plate, with an Idaho Potato balanced precariously on top. I hate to admit this, but if my memory isn't playing tricks, I seem to recall that we squeezed in some dessert.
It was then a quick sprint to see the Broadway production of the Tony Award winning play of the year, The Great White Hope starring a very young James Earl Jones. I daren't tell my grandson (Darth Junior) that many years later he provided the voice of Darth Vader.
I had forgotten that in the Sixties one dressed to the nines to hit the town.
Mayor John Lindsay was up for re-election ...
... and life was so innocent pre-September 11.
I have returned to New York on more than one occasion with my husband and children and have loved the experience, but there's nothing quite like that first time in New York.
14 comments:
These slides are amazing! It must have been so lovely seeing them after all these years have passed. Thanks so much for sharing them, I really loved looking at them!
Oh Robyn - what a lovely post and so beautifully arranged. I love the Breakfast at Tiffany pose - so stylish!
Yay for modern technology! These images are awesome! You've managed to further fuel my obsession for all things New York! It must have been so fun to experience that city during such a cool decade. LOVE the Breakfast at Tiffany's pose! You should have been starring in that film instead of that Audrey whatshername. What a groovy chick you are...ooops, that's more 70s lingo than 60s. You know what I mean ;) Thanks for posting this. I really enjoyed it!
Robyn, these slides look like a movie set. Everyone dressed so beautifully, the cars, the styling - oh I am so jealous. My mum keeps telling my sisters and I what it was like being young in the sixties. I can't wait to go to New York for the first time.
Thanks for sharing your memories.
x Catherine
Just wonderful to see those pictures.
Robyn these are fantastic!! what a wonderful discovery and i off now to dust and spring my boxes shipped back from overseas.....
me again Robyn, I just remembered that if you are a fan of the Breakfast at Tiffany story , you should read a book by lady called Majorie Hart as she wrote a book about her and a friend on a summer break spent in New York in 1945 and they were the first women to work on the floor at Tiffany and Co. It is called Summer at Tiffany and is a truly special book, I recommend getting in the hardback version also!
Thank you for sharing these pics, no wonder you were excited to find them again. I can't wait for my first trip to NY.
This is the BEST post Robyn, I have actually gone back and read it twice! So many great photos, and may I say, you really did have a most stylish haircut, and also I Love the fabric your dress is made from - had you made it yourself?
Anyway, thanks for a brilliant post - I enjoyed it immensely!
Thanks for all the kind responses. In answer to Mimoo, no, I haven't heard of the book, but will certainly search it out. Thanks so much for bringing it to my attention.
No Bec, I didn't make this little granny print number. I was spoilt rotten by my mother. Being an only daughter I had a wardrobe full of clothes she made for me, including overcoats and ballgowns. Sigh.
More...more....Please????
I could read this all night - what an amazing collection of photos. You were so stylish (as I'm sure you still are). The window shots are brilliant....oh I just loved it all!!! Fabulous capture of a great city in a great time.
oh wow those old photos are so great they such a great feel to them, and i LOVE the shot of you checking out Tiffany and Co.
Thanks for sharing those:)
Amazing post! I'm a Native New Yorker now living in Arizona.What a slice of history you've captured, the clothing, the businesses-all of it. I was bron in 1973 so I missed much of what you've displayed-it really is an awesome experience, living in NYC.
I'm glad you found your slides! They are so vivid and wonderful! Do you have any more?
They bring back memories of the New York I grew up in. I was born in 1960 and grew up in Manhattan, and still remember those kinds of street scenes as plain as day!
New York was going "downhill" in the 60s and 70s, but those were its heydays. It "came back" in the 80s and 90s, but what we got was a "sanitized" city. It was never the same again...
Thanks for posting your old New York pics!
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