10 NYC Neighborhoods That Died — and the People Who Tried to Save Them

New York has always sold change as progress, but some changes came with a price the city rarely admits. Seneca Village, Little Syria, the old Penn Station, the Fulton Fish Market, the Bowery, Little Italy and other lost corners were not just “redeveloped.” They were emptied, renamed, cleaned up, priced out or bulldozed while the people who built them were pushed aside. Some places vanished completely. Others survived only as a name tourists still recognize without knowing what used to live there. This is the darker map of New York: the neighborhoods the city celebrates only after making sure their original people are gone.