Quote Originally Posted by lalynch View Post
We were living in Summit, New Jersey. I was 7 years old. The focus there was the riots in Newark, NJ. I remember seeing the news reports on TV and being worried about my Dad who worked in Newark. After about that period, his office was moved to NYC.
As many know the Detroit and Newark riots were about 1 week apart from each other. In both cities the downtown areas were spared from major damage. However both downtown areas suffered a mortal blow from the riots in the form of all the offices and retail stores that started to flee either just after the riots, or when their leases came up.

By the mid-70's both downtown's saw a huge drop in their daytime "worker" population as companies moved their workforces to the suburbs.
Newark held onto it's last downtown department store [[Bamberger's/Macy's) longer than Detroit did, BUT in the last 10 years that Macys' was open [[1981 to 1991) it sold mostly clearance and cast off merchandise in a building that looked like a bank vault with all it's display windows closed up, and only 3 of it's 9 public entrance ways still in use.

I was 6 years old that summer and I still remember it well, too well.

Ken