The Street Changes Hardcover by Daniel Root

Product Details

• Publisher: Abbeville Publishing Group (2026-04-21)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 240 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780789215154
• Item Weight: 567.0 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

An exciting and essential record of downtown Manhattan—iconic street scenes captured from the same vantage point in 1980s and today

When photographer Daniel Root moved to the East Village in the early 1980s, this constantly changing neighborhood was in one of its periods of greatest ferment. Multiple immigrant groups maintained enclaves there—including Ukrainians, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Dominicans, and Poles—even as drug dealers plied their trade in abandoned buildings and young artists flooded in looking for cheap rents, followed close behind by real estate speculators. Through his lens, Root captured a young Madonna filming Desperately Seeking Susan on St. Mark’s Place; the storefront galleries of the East Village art scene; Life Cafe, where Jonathan Larson would write—and set—Rent; retirees playing chess in Tompkins Square Park; junkies fleeing the police. Forty years later, Root—still an East Village resident—has returned to the very same places where he took those pictures, to document how the scene has changed.

Root’s “then and now” photographs, presented together in this volume along with his wry commentary, document the transformation of a legendary New York neighborhood for better and worse—higher rents, yes, but lower crime; displacement, but also the persistence of community and creativity. A foreword by renowned artist Peter McGough and noted Beat historian Bill Morgan shed further light on the history of the East Village. This will be an essential volume for all downtown denizens, past, present, and future.

About the Author

Daniel Root is a fine art photographer and a principal in the design firm The Root Group. His predawn photographs of Manhattan have attracted a devoted following among bartenders and other night shift workers, and have been featured on NY1. Root lives on the Lower East Side and is a very early riser.

Peter McGough is a visual artist and author of the critically acclaimed memoir I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s.

Bill Morgan is the author of numerous books about the Beat Generation, as well as I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg.