Before it was swept clean and purified with Disney goodness, you could enjoy New York’s 42nd street in all its noisy, colorful, rude, and vivid glory. Mitch O’Connell shares his treasure trove of late 20th century photos.

As an aspiring teenaged artist I would travel to NY every once in a while to show my illustrations. This was before websites, emails and electricity, so you had to get your work seen the old fashioned way, by pestering. I'd crash at friends’/relatives’ apartments and spend the day cold-calling and pleading. If I was lucky I'd get an actual face-to-face with an art director at a magazine or comic publisher, but more often than not I’d be asked to drop off my portfolio at 10am and pick it up after lunch. I had only one portfolio (didn't think to have multiples), which left me with plenty of free time to stroll the city, and what was more eye catching than 42nd Street? I wish I’d taken 1000 more photos (and gone back at night) of the amazing buildings and people that could be found only there, but at least I got a handful of snapshots of the long-gone cool decaying seediness of that bustling stretch of real estate!

42 street 5

42 street 6

42 street 7

42 street 8

42 street 9

42 street 10

42 street 11

42 street 12

42 street 14

42 street 15

42 street 16

42 street 17

42 street 18

42 street 19

42 street 20

42 street 22

42 street 23

42 street 25

42 street 26

42 street 27

42 street 28

42 street 30

42 street 32

42 street jesus

42 street21

42 street24

42

42a

42aaa

42aaaaaaaa

42b

42c

42e

42nd streetg

421-1

421

422-1

422-2

422

423-1

423

424

425

426

427

428

429

4210

4211

4212

4213

4215

4222

422222

ny4

ny5

ny6

ny7

ny8

(via Mitch O'Connell's excellent blog)