Lindsay and Beame may have been nice people, but they were arguably the two worst mayors in NYC history. I posted the high homicide rates in another comment. But equally problematic was the “planned shrinkage” policy of deliberately cutting public safety services in poor neighborhoods such as the South Bronx and East Brooklyn, deliberately destroying those communities. One consequence was the complete and total destruction of the Jewish community in most of the Bronx. There are hundreds of former synagogue buildings, many of which had been orthodox, that are now churches. (A few were constructively repurposed; the former Hebrew Institute of University Heights — now the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale — is now a Boys and Girls Club; the Young Israel of the Concourse is now part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts although its earlier building is now a church.)
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