Nov. 14, 1962 - New York City was characterized in a Soviet magazine today as “gloomy” and overrun with hooligans, noise, and slums. The Broadway area at Times Square was called a “tasteless, vulgar bazaar.” But the magazine, New Times, praised New York’s new skyscrapers as “excellent works of modern architecture.” It said the Jewish population of Brooklyn was being terrorized by thugs, citing the recent fatal beating of an elderly rabbi. Beyond the beautiful buildings of New York, the magazine said, “we have narrow, dirty slits of innumerable monotonous and gloomy streets with worn-out houses and gloomy, dirty courtyards.” “Broadway embodies everything that is uncultured, ignorant, and primitive in the American way of life,” the magazine added.
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