Text and photographs by Stephen Harmon
When I photographed people on the Upper West Side in the 1970s and 80s, whether candidly or after obtaining permission, I loved capturing them as they sat on the benches and Broadway medians, talking, reading, daydreaming, or thinking deep thoughts. This was life! The “Bench Sitters,” as I later called them, were men, women, young, old, black, and white. There was a wonderful diversity and humanity and everyone seemed to belong. Here is a group of those photos. I hope you will find something to enjoy.
Stephen Harmon is a longtime Upper West Sider, a retired lawyer, and a world-class photographer whose work is displayed in many of the city’s museums, including The Museum of the City of New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The New York Historical, and The New York Public Library.
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
We need more benches! We have barely any on the cross streets.
So true!
These are some of Mr. Harmon’s best photos yet. Works of art.
I agree Eric! I found these to be very moving. Mr. Harmon exquisitely captured each person and the setting.
Stephen Harmon and Robert Beck in a single edition of the Rag! A treasure worth bookmarking.
I love these photos so much! The one of the two women with the hats and the beaded necklaces is my fave. Also, it’s great to see people reading newspapers and writing in notebooks. Not a cell phone in sight. 🙂
Love these photos, but do you have any of the elderly gentlemen who would have a transistor radio at their ears, tuned to “All News WINS” 24/7 ? Loved driving up Broadway and seeing them at the corners…
I have become the 21st century version of this 😩 (bluetooth earbuds replace the old white wired ear jack) listening to CNN.
Love these. And yes, would love more benches- that pic a few from the bottom looks like a regular park bench but on Broadway, don’t know where that is or, more likely, was!
Thank you SO MUCH Steven Harmon. These pictures take me right back, they are amazing. Somehow they function in my brain the way an aroma does – direct to the memory. Keep them coming!
great photos – love the sequence and the final one, with the effect of closing with a panorama/ensemble, as if a wink at us perhaps
Again, wonderful work!
I love these pictures
I remember when I was a kid, there would be leope gathered on the benches on RSD in the spring, chattering in Yiddish.
I was happy to see this past fall about 4 or 5 elderly men sitting on the benches on Broadway, talking to each other in Spanish and that thick NY accent you don’t hear so much anymore,. It made me happy because I realized I hadn’t seen that in so long
There used to be benches in all the malls on Broadway the entire length.
Fabulous pictures! What a history! Equal to that great book of photos from a woman living on Central Park West, from her terrace. The photos were about the seasons and changes of Central Park and all the goings on. I think it was Ruth…something or other. I had the book but someone borrowed it and it’s gone …. but these bench photos are marvelous!
Thank you for mentioning the seasonal photos of Central Park. I believe the photographer’s name was Ruth Orkin. I just looked them up and the photos are simply beautiful. Now I need to see more of Ms Orkin’s work.
Wouldn’t it be nice if folks still sat on the benches like this and socialized or just read? It seems to have disappeared with the cell phone. And yes, we need more benches.
Wonderful and colorful photos of people enjoying themselves!
These characters were a “work of art” … I feel I’m looking at an 1970’s Archie Bunker TV show.
Who was there costume designer back then?
Unbelievable what I’m looking at…. You can’t make this up!
Once again, thank you. Wonderful photos . What I remember from the bench sitters of the 60s and 70s were the Eastern European men — liberals, socialists, communists — vociferously discussing politics in English with a smattering ofYiddish. To an you imagine what they would make of what’s going on now?
I can tell you that this has been going on since they built the Broadway malls, and continues to this day. In fact, not even the pandemic stopped people from using the benches. I have myself been a bench-sitter for a few years, doing it more or less depending on whether I was working. Now I am retired, and while I can’t sit for long in the cold weather, when it is warm, I always try to put in an hour or so (if not more) of sitting and either quietly reflecting, reading or doing crossword puzzles.
And while other benches (sidewalks, etc.) have almost all disappeared, we do have some, thanks to Gale Brewer, who was instrumental in getting those (admittedly not quite as comfortable) metal benches placed every few blocks in many neighborhoods, including the UWS.
The only new element is that an occasional bench along the Broadway Malls has been co-opted by delivery bikers, who “hang out” together as they wait for delivery calls. But I don’t begrudge them this, as it not only provides for a safe “collective” for them, but allows them to sit for a while and rest their legs.
When I began volunteering in the Broadway Malls (100th to 104th Sts.) in 1991, directly with Parks, I was paying attention to the interiors and end beds of the Malls, the plants and flowers and weeds and trash, and not so much the bench areas. I cleaned out piles of trash and pieces of furniture, bikes and parts, you name it, from those Malls and when folks asked what I was doing, they looked at me as if I was crazy when I told them. I encountered piles of crack vials, and sometimes users in the process. As I continued to work and learn about plants out there, I also started to address the bench areas, to try to clean them up some and make them more welcoming. I cut down to only 3 blocks, to keep up. On 9/11, I went out to the Mall at 102nd St.,, and sat on my bench on the downtown side. As the sun started to set, the trucks began to come in, rolling down Broadway towards the WTC site. It is something I will never forget. The Broadway Malls Association eventually pushed me out, and I went to Riverside Park, where I also have a couple of great benches, and some great “sitters!”
Wow! People READING, TALKING…..not looking down at their phones! Imagine that. I lived on W,70th in the mid-70s and then moved uptown to 108th and Bway. This was how I remember the UWS from that time period. Great throw-back.
Love these photographs. Where’s the book!?
Wonderful — thank you!!
Lots of “eyes on the street” back then. A good reminder that when we design streets for people to walk and sit, our neighborhood becomes safer and more vibrant.
Maybe we need to put some benches in the newly reclaimed curb spaces from ‘daylighting’ efforts to foster natural surveillance.
People! The most interesting in the world. GOD has done wond’rous things!
I love your photos and can easily get lost in the details of each picture. I’m always disappointed when I come to the last one. I can immerse myself in thoughts about their individual lives. My heart breaks for the man wearing several coats and writing something in the paper. A crossword puzzle? Simply doodling? His right hand looks blue and I assume (wrongly, perhaps) he was homeless. I wonder what he was thinking, how he physically got to the bench, where he went later (did he sleep on the bench?) and how he was actually feeling.
Correction: This is a woman and I incorrectly stated it was a man.
Love these! I noticed all the newspapers on the ground behind the bench in photo #3! At least we can be grateful for digital news for helping to save some trees and contain the massive litter of yesteryear. Thanks for the reminder via your wonderful photos.
I hate that we have to wait a whole week for the next installment. I love these.
Oh Steve, these are wonderful!
Bench sitters of UWS were immortalized in so many films and other media from 1960’s through 1980’s. This back when UWS was a vastly different place as was NYC as a whole I suppose.
Film “Harry and Tonto” comes to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPZ87LqYzlM
Thank you for the wonderful photos of UWS ‘Bench Sitters’ of the 1970s and 80s. In 1969 or 1970, I wrote a article that was published in New York Magazine, “The Island People of Upper Broadway,” illustrated by Burt Silverman. An old copy of the article is attached with that has poor reproductions of the article. https://books.google.com/books?id=K91b8gxHSqAC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=%22The+Bench+Sitters%22+burton+silverman&source=bl&ots=zjcoXp17Be&sig=VFJXc0bHgSDIA7Kvt-fn_l4p_70&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwy7PryKvTAhVHyoMKHU4qDq4Q6AEIIjAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Bench%20Sitters%22%20burton%20silverman&f=false
Wonderful piece and illustrations! Thank you.
How I miss the golden age of Broadway bench-sitting and mourn its passing! Back then, of course, there was more sunlight to soak up, before Progress replaced so many of our pleasant low-rises with luxurious, towering filing cabinets. “Preserve your memories / They’re all that’s left you.”
Ah,, “Bookends”
Back when the city was civilized.
Thanks to Mayor Adams and AG Bragg it’s every man for him/her self.
someone always has to try to make the false point that crime has destroyed the city in recent years. I have news for you: violent crime was much , much higher in the 70s and 80s.
I moved into the UWS form S. Africa in 1980 just two months before John Lennon was killed outside his apartment on W. 72nd. So sad. In those days people would imagine that it was ‘dangerous to walk around above W 83rd street’. Which in retrospect wasn’t true. The community was mostly made up of people speaking spanish who’d moved here from the Dominican Republic. sitting along Amsterdam Ave and playing cards with each other. The UWS had a completely different vibe in those days. .. But it was totally wonderful.