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