While searching in some rather obscure corners of the Web, I found some period photos of vandalized and abandoned cars. Photos like these are relatively rare and hard to find, as most people did not take pictures of then-common, junky cars. I don’t think these have been posted on CC before, but even if one or two have, I think they’re worth a second look. Name of photographer and location given, if known.
What is this strange male urge (Yes, it’s always boys in the pictures doing this)–this urge to destroy?
Have you ever smashed a windshield or set fire to a seat cushion?
“Uh, no. That was . . . other kids–huh-huh.”
The following pictures were taken in Glenview (near Chicago, IL) in the early 1970s by Christopher Brame. He still has the Plymouth hubcap and the ’61 Mercury speedometer that he saved that day.
This next series of photos were given to Christopher by a junior high school female classmate, who got them from some “weird guy” neighbor of hers. Again, Chicago/Glenview area:
Destroying a Chrysler 300 for charity:
Car Painting Division:
~~~~~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~~~~~
These are Great. Love the vintage black & white pics !!! Thanks for posting these…
Stephen, I’m always drawn to your photo-essay posts like this, for a number of reasons. As a transplant from your area these scenes of NYC during its darker days have a strange bitter-sweetness about them. Growing up in the leafy, manicured suburbs of Northern Bergen County in the 70’s we were so far removed from all those sinister scenes just across the river, but there was always the news footage as a reminder that it was just *that* close. It was almost an “It could happen here too” kind of warning that kept us alert, without really understanding all the moving parts of how this stuff happened. I can still remember my grandfather taking a very young me in to see the newly opened World Trade Center one weeknight, and the preparations for that excursion included not only taking my grandmother’s little runabout Corolla (you certainly wouldn’t take “The Good Car” into the city in those days, but a heavy mallet tucked into an inside pocket of his overcoat just in case. I’m not sure what the old guy thought he’d do with that, but you’d do things like that back then, as if you were taking a time-trip to the Wild Wild West or something.
I lived in Harlem through most of the aughts as the area continued to gradually gentrify, and it was truly an entirely different world from just a scant few decades earlier. Old friends and relatives were often shocked that an educated, professional white guy “from a good family” would live in such a place…still seeing in their minds as portrayed in these photos. Those were some of my best years to date, and the absolute favorite place I’ve ever lived , among several.
What a strange world existed when it was fairly common to use up something as big and costly as an entire automobile, then just basically toss it into a ditch or gutter like a spent cigarette butt. Increasing crackdowns obviously eliminated most of this behavior, but as late as 1989 I knew of a former high school classmate who abandoned a 2 year old Firebird Formula under an overpass on the BQE to get out from under his crippling delinquency to GMAC, obviously still picturing scenes from a few years earlier of totally picked over carcasses as the only remains of vehicles left there for just a few hours. By that time however things were not quite the way they were in, say 1981, and the scheme very quickly came back to haunt him in a big way, as he was convicted of insurance fraud.
Still, I find these photos oddly compelling.
I find them compelling too.
Smashing cars was a real thing back then, as in both very public as well as covert ways. There was a lot of resentment against cars, even if it was unconscious, given the impact they created, especially in the post war years. In New York, Robert Moses’ heavy handed bulldozing of many tight-knit ethnic/Black communities to build parkways and freeways. The rapid suburban expansion had numerous negative effects. Commuting traffic jams were largely a new phenomena, and a not-well received one. And of course the environmental impact.
Public car-smashing events, and related ones like burying them and such were quite a common phenomena through the ’70s, but then quickly died out. The pendulum swung, cars became environmentally cleaner, and the early disruptions became an accepted way of life. I haven’t heard about any such events in a long time, except for demolition derbies, which are a different animal.
I rather miss public car smashing events. Cars inevitably have a shadow side, and I think it’s healthy to vent those feelings from time to time. Or maybe younger generations don’t have those feelings anymore?
“Rage Against The Machine”.
Photo is from my college yearbook (1989). The idea of “The American Society of Mechanical Engineers” destroying a product of engineering–how ironic!
The year I went, they destroyed a 1970 Pontiac LeMans with a 6 cyl. Boy, that car was tough! First they did continuous burnouts with it, filling the whole area with noxious smoke, spewing “rubber raisins” and glowing red tire cords all over. Then they drained the oil and coolant, and took bets as to when the engine would seize. I think it set a record for the longest time!
Robert Moses’ big plan–the “Cross Manhattan Expressway” was thwarted by politics and community opposition. You can Google Image Search “SoHo cast iron district” and see all the splendid 19th century buildings that would have been lost had it gone through.
And I might add back then, it wasn’t uncommon for Detroit auto workers to take a sledge hammer to the nearest foreign car either.
To Paul’s point, I suspect younger folk don’t feel that way, because the machine they interact with is vastly safer and cleaner than the ones of this era. And the idea of a world before mass car transit is now as lost to history as the people who might recall it. The shadow side, the idea of The Car itself as a malign force, has lost its prominence.
I hope I’m wrong, though. There is still a vast shadow side that, through long exposure, we no longer really see, and it’s up to the coming generations to address it. Mine sure as shit hasn’t.
Love the image of the floating white Mustang…very surreal and dystopian!
Very cool collection! I recall an article in Time magazine, back in the ’60’s. Using a camera van, Time filmed the very fast stripping of an early ’60’s Oldsmobile parked on the West Side highway in NYC.
Within minutes of the Olds being placed, the stripping began, and within a few hours there was little left of the car but a hulk. The article showed the photos and a time log of what pieces were taken and when. Tires, battery, radio, body and engine parts, seats… all carried off by the packs of auto-eating piranhas.
The 53 Studebaker in the water with the caption”??????” isn’t abandoned. The is a driver in it and he just launched a boat. The top of the boat trailer is visible but most of it is underwater. The Marmon 16 is quite a find!!!
Love pics of the Studebakers.
Reminds me of a time when out to the farm in the early ’70’s, there was a creek/ drainage ditch that kept eroding away, the local commission brought in 6 old cars, fairly complete, & set them in the ditch bank to minimize the erosion. I remember the line-up…a 57 Chevy 4 door, a early 60’s Rambler, a newer Ford Falcon, an early ’60’s Olds 88, a Plymouth Valiant 4 door & a Studebaker Hawk. These had glass, drivelines, everything. Was just becoming aware of the car bug, was neat the explore these half buried hulks & pull out a few treasures. Zoom forward a few years, they came back in, pulled them out & hauled them away. Seems that there was still tires, oil & antifreeze in them & no one checked on environmental back then. 5 more were brought in, but were gutted & crushed, could hardly tell what they were….
The Cadillac below the 59 Dodge, appears to be sticking its’ “tongue” out at the stae it has ended up in!! 🙂
Re: the pic of the blue 68ish Chevy under that HUGE boulder…..how did that happen?
It’s a ’69 Chevy, and I would like to know the same thing!
How in the heck did that happen? Is that near Mount St. Helens? Actually, even that powerful eruption probably could not have launched that bolder into the air.
When you’re driving in the mountains, there are signs that say beware of falling rocks. The rocks are usually smaller in size but sometimes enough of them fall down over time to leave a massive boulder supported by not much. Eventually gravity wins again. “ The Old Man Of The Mountain” in New Hampshire is a prime example. One day it was there and when the fog cleared it was gone.
I heard that it was in a garage that a boulder fell on. The garage rotted away.
The 5 pictures above the ’69 Impala that revenuer cited above appear to be “Curtis Perry Outtakes” that have graced these pages in the past.
Paul usually posted those. Perhaps he can confirm? The lighting looks like his work.
It looks like building dropped on that ’74 LTD in the picture above the cathedral shot.
As a little kid, my city was usually pretty quick to remove any abandoned or vandalized cars. It was when my parents retired to the country, that I noticed many people often parked their used up cars somewhere on their property. My first real exposure to very old cars from previous decades, in decent shape, in the community. Without the vandalism.
Off topic, but I found this pic interesting for the school bus parked in the background. Through my early/mid 80s high school experience, I rode an identical Chev bus with a Sheller-Globe/Superior body, with that unique high roof extension. Not sure of the practical purpose of the high roof, as the standard roof was plenty tall for adults. They were rare. Probably useful for field trips that included skiing. And this pic is one of few I’ve seen on the web. My bus did have a flat black hood.
Pretty surprised to see the abandoned cars across the street from Cathedral of St John the Devine in NYC. That’s in Morningside Heights, the location of Columbia University – and it’s just unimaginable today.
Just a comment on the young male’s need for damage and destruction. This is an impulse that civilization was developed to channel and control, and hopefully redirect. I think that it’s part of many, if not most, males and has been a driving force in history and society. Sometimes for the better, but often for the worst. The urge to destroy is still pervasive and is on display right now.
That’s well-put. I’m a male – and it’s there. Unexercised since youth, but still there.
Poor things, just got unlucky enough to end up in such a sad point in their existence.
All I can say is that I’m happy I don’t live in NYC!
Bit surprised at the lack of graffiti. Particularly on the newer pics.
On the road into Holberg, on Vancouver Island. This is a replacement for an older car that was pretty much completely invisible.
I remember scenes such as this in New York in the 1980s. At least once a week I’d discover an abandoned car on my way to or from school. I used to carry a screwdriver and built up quite a collection of emblems, most of which I still have. There was also a large area of empty wasteland in Canarsie, on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, where stolen cars would be taken, stripped and dumped. It was like a free junkyard. I remember going there when I needed trunk springs for my Olds or other small bits and, again, hunting for emblems. Some kids would go there to smash and burn the cars, the fire department would not even go there most of the time, the cars would just burn until they burned up. At least once I saw someone take an old car there and just drive it around smashing into all the other burned up cars until it wouldn’t run anymore, then just walk back home. There was also an unfinished street nearby with pavement but nothing along on the sides for several blocks. The area never never got developed until much later. There used to be illegal races there every weekend, burnouts, etc. Eventually the NYPD deliberately damaged the pavement to put a stop to it. There’s a big shopping mall on that land now and several streets of new houses, if you weren’t there in the 1980s, you’d never guess. I wish I took photos, but at the time it was so normal and not worthy of any particular effort to document…
Wow!!
The NYC photos I consider important historical documents. They capture what happens to a city when those in charge disown part of it’s self allowing it to self-destruct. Also interesting is how natures slow, deliberate and holistic recycling contrasts that of humans fast, selective and forget the rest recycling. Growing up I was fortunate to experience a diverse multicultural inner city. Then after my mother remarried we moved to a newly developing suburb. What the suburb lacked in human diversity it made up with diversity of nature. A large section land by my house was designated a suburban nature refuge. It included a few abandoned small homes taken by imminent domain several years prior. That provided my friends and I opportunities to “re-brake” several windows. Sounds of breaking glass was the prelude this a preteens anarchist symphony. It was short-lived, liberating, exhilarating and frightening in a way no other sound has effected me. Most will only ever hear it as a sound effect or result of an accident as it should be.
Have you seen the well-to-do/up on Lenox Avenue?/On that famous thoroughfare/With their noses in the air…
My favorite version of that song (Fred Astaire, 1930)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5CadIRcKI8
There are stretches of Lenox Ave. betw. 118th & 132nd that still look the way they did in the early 20th century. Most buildings are renovated now, so the Avenue looks better now than it did in the 70s-80s.
Isnt’ that Opie Taylor on top of that Chevy in the first picture (3rd from the left)?
It does look like him. Who knew that Opie had this in him? I think Goober put him up to it.
Some extraordinary images.
I’ve smashed windows, as a young teen, on abandoned old wrecks, and houses. I understand the urge. I think it falls away as the male brain is finally fully wired up – these days, suggested to be as late as 23-25 – and realizes something along the lines of this: whatever the thrill, destruction is not building, and there is a future.
There was a road nearby where I lived for quite a while. Country road, not bad area, not good, maybe more like pasture land. For a time in perhaps the early 90s, it seemed if someone broke down on it and left it there say overnight, the car would be absolutely trashed by the next day. Even happened one time to an acquaintance of mine. He certainly wasn’t happy, but not nearly as upset as I would have been if it had been my car. I fully expected someone, who liked guns and didn’t like their being trashed, to put a bait car out there and start shooting at the vandals. Fortunately I never heard of it happening.
In many rural areas I see people don’t sell or junk old vehicles, they just kind of put them literally out to pasture. Seems like when they die, or are rendered obsolete, they don’t sell them or junk them, they just park them over there, next to the other ones. Now I’ve been known to have a parts car or two, but that’s not what I’m talking about, people just put them out to pasture.
I don’t want to tout myself as a saint but I can honestly say I’ve ever vandalized or even had the urge to vandalize property that wasn’t my own, though maybe the video games were kind of an outlet for that kind of aggression, could explain why it’s not as common today as it was then. I broke a window getting into a locked car at a junkyard once, I felt bad for anyone who might have needed that window afterwards!
It’s pretty amazing these photos, I “missed out” on the worst of city decay but I vividly remember seeing some of the seedier areas of Chicago as a little kid that are unrecognizable today, so many of the imposing abandoned and decaying factory buildings, high rise projects and old apartment buildings, as well as disused infrastructure I found memorable about going there have since been restored, demolished with either gentrified new developments or simply left as empty lots. I’m curious about the ratios when it comes to all the abandoned cars in the old days, eg how many were stolen by criminals, how many were insurance fraud committed by owners, and how many were stripped for parts and vandalized while unattended and simply left there. It seemed to be so rampant I imagine it was pretty evenly spread.
These pictures are a great depiction of basic human nature. When nobody cares about the surroundings and nobody gets in trouble for vandalism, there is more vandalism. When people have gotten their use out of an object and it is easier to leave it and walk away rather than dispose of it legitimately, that’s what happens. Then there are the car thieves/strippers who victimize the car’s owner when it is stolen then victimize a poor neighborhood by dumping it when they are finished.
We get a functioning society only by overcoming basic human nature, not giving in to it.
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and remember abandoned and stripped cars seemingly everywhere in NYC. Driving along the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn you would see cars stripped of almost everything sitting on the shoulder. My dad would always joke that the guy just went for a gallon of gas five minutes ago upon seeing one of these cars. Also out around Mill Basin off of the Belt Parkway stolen cars would get pushed into the water. At high tide nothing would be visible but low tide would show all the carcasses. As Big Beat mentioned, those illegal street races were on Fountain Avenue in Canarsie. Finally, regarding Robert Moses, he did do tremendous damage to many ethnic and poor neighborhoods with his transportation projects but he also rammed through projects through the so called middle class neighborhoods. One such instance was the Gowanus Expressway where it connected to the Verrazano Narrows bridge. Community activists pleaded for the bridge approaches to be built on Seventh Avenue which would entail much less housing to be razed since a golf course bordered the area and a private prep school opposite of it. Instead he built it right through the more dense part of the neighborhood taking way more homes (including my grandmother’s). The Clearview Expressway in Queens is yet another example.
It was Vandalia Ave., between Flatlands and Fountain. Same general area, but a bit closer to Starrett City. Right behind the water treatment plant. Vandalia gets cut off by Hendrix Creek, and the part beyond the creek was paved for future development, but then the city went bankrupt and it remained undeveloped for a few decades. Most of the other streets in the area between Vandalia and the Belt Parkway didn’t exist then. The wasteland/”free junkyard” was where Gateway Drive is today.
Fascinating bunch of photos! Thanks for putting this together. I’ve long had an interest in urban decay, combined with my interest in cars, makes these a double whammy.
One of my favorite books, on urban decay and in general, is Report From Engine Co. 82 by Dennis Smith. Written by a NYC fireman in the early 70’s about working in the Bronx in that era of rapid decay. Lots of action, but it’s the interactions with the citizens, many of them sad and tragic, that paint the picture of what it was like living in the decay of a city racing to reach rock bottom.
Even growing up in Burlington, VT I was part of two car-tearing apart incidents, although both with the owner’s permission – the first time when I was around 10-12 and the neighbor had enough of his Fiat 124 coupe and started tearing it apart himself on a summer afternoon with the neighborhood kids joining in. Eventually he cut the roof off with a chainsaw. The second time was a college fundraiser like the one above, something like a dollar a swing at a junker (a ’79ish Country Squire at that time) sometime in the early-mid ’90s. It was almost passe by then and I haven’t heard of another such event since.
Brings back sad memories of Boston in the early 1960’s .
-Nate
Triste, para não dizer deprimente, e com o advento da eletrificação , será esse o fim dos automóveis que fizeram parte do progresso…..
These are terrific and that first one is the Ultimate Happy Father’s Day Shot™.