When American photographer Meryl Meisler arrived in Bushwick, Brooklyn, for a job interview at I.S. 291 Roland Hayes in December 1981 she was shocked at the state of the neighborhood.
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“I got out of the subway and everything was boarded up or burned down. It looked like there was a war going on but this was a quiet time,” she recalls. “I thought to myself, ‘It’s a week before Christmas and there’s a job opening? Maybe the other art teacher was killed.’”
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Meisler, who had previously been a hostess in Manhattan’s famous go-go bars, arrived at the junior high school on Palmetto Street. The school stood at the edge of an area that had been destroyed by a devastating fire that wiped out 23 buildings that occurred just one week after the infamous 1977 blackout unleashed a wave of arson and looting across the community.
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Four years later, Bushwick remained in dire straights with 45% of the population living below the poverty level. “I later found out it had one of the highest vacancy rates in the city — people were leaving,” says Meisler.
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