During the 1970s – for the whole decade – the Bronx suffered an epidemic of fires and abandonment. This destroyed over 80 percent of the South Bronx housing stock making it look like a bombed out city during World War II. What exactly caused this? Some blamed its residents, others blamed the landlords. In 1975, Gelvin Stevenson, a Bronx economist and journalist tried to sound the alarm by telling the story of one building on one boulevard that once promised the American Dream — but then succumbed to abandonment; Roosevelt Gardens on the Grand Concourse.

In this episode, we investigate the toxic mix of invisible factors that turned the Bronx into a tinderbox

The Other Hijacker

Shoe Leather is an investigative podcast that goes behind the scenes of forgotten stories that shaped New York City. Go along with the team as they knock on doors and track down the people who were at the center of the news.

This season, we're going to 1970 Greenwich Village. A townhouse suddenly explodes. And authorities find out that it’s ground zero for the operations of the Weather Underground: a radical group of young revolutionaries who use violence to "bring the war home." Three members are killed in the explosion, two others escape. Police would later describe the townhouse as a “bomb factory.” What pushes a protest movement toward violence? What makes a group of mostly middle-class, college-educated young men and women decide to build a bomb?