In the 1980s, parts of the Bronx looked very different from what people see today. I remember watching a documentary recently that talked about abandoned buildings and how some landlords would let them burn for insurance money. It wasn’t just something you saw on TV. I was a kid back then, and I remember buildings catching fire more than once. On my block, it always seemed to be the same place going up.
We lived on Walton Avenue, and across the street there was an abandoned building with what looked like a back lot. Taking out the trash was never a normal trip to the basement or the curb. Instead, we’d go up to the roof. My father would grab the garbage bags, spin them around, and toss them across into the empty building.
As a kid, I never questioned it. It was just part of life. One day, though, I looked down through the fire escape to see where the trash was actually landing. What I saw stuck with me. There were bags everywhere—hundreds of them—piled up at the bottom like a dump site inside the building.
Looking back now, it’s hard to believe we were living right next to something like that. It explains a lot about the mice and rats that seemed to be in every building we lived in during those years. I don’t remember any strong smell in our apartment, probably because we were up on the fourth floor, but the conditions around us were rough.
When people talk about the Bronx in the 1980s, they usually mention the fires, the abandoned buildings, and the hard times. For some of us, those weren’t just headlines or history lessons. That was everyday life. And because there were no phone cameras back then, a lot of those scenes exist only in memory. I just wish I had a picture of what I saw when I looked down into that building.
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