Then and Now: First Avenue

First Avenue, looking south from 45th Street, then and now.

1946

Photo by Wurts Brothers, looking south down First Avenue from 45th Street, Tudor City at center right. At the time, the corridor was devoted to meatpacking, and officially named the Abattoir Center; locals called it Slaughterhouse Row. 

The smokestacks are part of the Consolidated Edison steam plant. 

2020

74 years later, the same view is much airier than expected. Razed in 1948, the Abattoir Center was replaced by the United Nations campus, at left. The steam plant was demolished in 2007, and has been a vacant lot ever since.