Commissioned by the New York State Council of the Arts, “The Destruction of Lower Manhattan” is Danny Lyon’s personal documentary of the destruction of Manhattan’s oldest and most historic neighborhood. Although photographed in New York, this wholesale elimination of nineteenth-century neighborhoods is going on today in many cities across the country. The Destruction of Lower Manhattan is a historical record of a fast-disappearing scene and a beautiful portrait of buildings that we will never see again; but in a way, it is also a portrait of the people who lived there, of empty rooms with children’s paintings, furniture, stairwells, walls, windows, panelings an extraordinary and important document. It is a moving, powerful, and compassionate work of art.