Peter Bennett is a photographer who grew up in Greenwich Village, and has been lovingly documenting the world around him for decades. In the latest addition to our historic image archive, he has generously shared with us some of his amazing photographs of the East Village in the early 1980s, a time when the neighborhood was at perhaps its most raw and most creative. His images show an intimate first-person view of the places, people, and streets that defined a quintessential New York neighborhood at a time like no other, where many traditional structures had broken down, leading to abandonment, anarchy, regeneration, and renewal. You’ll see open air flea markets, punk street life, rubble-strewn lots, colorful murals and storefronts, beloved community institutions, and playful scenes of city life. 

Our historic image archive contains over 5,500 images in over 70 collections, most donated by the public, showing the history of our neighborhoods and great landmarks of New York City from the late 18th through the early 21st centuries.

Want to donate images to our archive? Learn more HERE.