The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [8]
For those fleeing the real or imagined plague abroad, the island of Manhattan is the new Mecca. In 1964, the United States was home for only 11 foreign banks. By July 1977, Manhattan alone had 128 foreign branches, with assets of $44 billion. Thirty-two of these had opened in the last year. Today, almost 70 percent of the total U.S. assets of all foreign banks are sequestered in Manhattan branches. Seventy-eight countries maintain consulates in Manhattan, more than in Washington. There are 131 international law firms and 543 restaurants offering foreign specialties. The twin 110-story towers of the World Trade Center, in lower Manhattan, house 120 foreign companies representing 60 nations. One-third of the new 1977 leases acquired by Rudin Management Corporation, one of Manhattan’s premier landlords, were signed by overseas firms. During the first two years of the city’s fiscal crisis, 1975–77, foreign companies leased 466,000 square feet of new office space.
An infectious spirit permeates mid-Manhattan. Broadway stars from Annie, A Chorus Line, The Wiz, The King and I and Dracula volunteer their time to belt out a joyously brilliant “I love New York” television commercial. Sylvester Stallone, Frank Sinatra, Faye Dunaway, Diana Ross and other big names are again making movies here. It seems like everyone, including me, is a Liz Smith addict, reading her New York Daily News column to learn if Woody still wears baggy pants, if Halston still adores Liz, Bianca and Liza, if Warren and Diane are nibbling on each other’s ears at Elaine’s. As I write, Central Park is closed on weekends, a victory over the automobile for the strollers and joggers. Monet is featured at the Metropolitan Museum; Calder and Matisse, at the Guggenheim; Saul Steinberg, at the Whitney; eighteenth-century Nigerian wood carvings, at the Museum of Natural History just blocks from my home. The Beethoven Society is at Hunter College; Baryshnikov, at the Metropolitan Opera House; film retrospectives, at the Regency; jazz at Hopper’s and Jimmy Ryan’s. Just about every newspaper and magazine in the world can be found on 42nd Street, as can just about every species of human. Even if you revel in none of these glories, New York can never be boring. It is the eighth wonder of the world. After you’ve seen the Pyramids, that’s it for Egypt. In Manhattan, there’s a pyramid on nearly every block.
Occasionally, Manhattan residents or visitors will confront intruders from another world—the world of Eighth Avenue, with its panhandlers, pimps and prostitutes; a stray youth gang snatching purses and gaining attention, as happened in the summer of 1977, by beating up two New York Times editors. Most people who run New York, or write about it, live in Manhattan or its suburbs. Without walls or iron gates, they have reason to feel as secure and sealed off as Prince Prospero.
But this Manhattan offers a distorted view of New York City. Outside, a plague spreads, ravaging much of the rest of the city. Two miles from Régine’s, where Park Avenue plunges thirty feet, grim railroad tracks suddenly surface to slice the avenue in half. The panorama of glistening office towers, penthouses and tulips gives way to tenements and abandoned, rubble-strewn lots. This is the world of Frank Rivera. Rivera rarely gets to visit south of 96th Street, except to work as a peddler on the sidewalk across from the Plaza Hotel. Fifty-seven blocks away from where he works, Rivera lives in a five-room walk-up at 1646 Park Avenue. The rent is $70 a month. The plaster is peeling. Rats abound. The wail of the subway is the music he has lived with, here, for the last twenty years.
Frank Rivera’s home is East Harlem. In nearby Central Harlem, once known as the black capital of America, 24 percent of the residents were on welfare in 1977; 75 percent of the children were born to mothers without husbands. The infant mortality rate, 42.8 for each 1,000 births, is more than twice the citywide average. Each year, 3,000 apartments fall to arson, abandonment, decay.