But photos of the area's 'notorious' dive bar,Terminal, have been preserved by the bartender and photographer who served drinks to pimps, prostitutes and destitute New Yorkers floating around the Port Authority bus terminal.

Sheldon Nadelman, 80, who worked at the bar from 1973 to 1982, would meet and photograph the women as they came in at eight in the morning for three shots of cognac before going out to walk the streets.

His amateur work, which includes thousands of portraits from the period, often focused on the street trash can he could see from the bar, where a cross section of Times Square's hustlers and homeless stopped for a rest.

Nadelman snapped genuine shots as sex workers hid behind newsstands to avoid police at the terminal across the street and watched as the lives of many who entered his bar slowly fall apart.

'The street eats them alive,' Nadelman said of his bar's clients, which included a combination of gay men, cross-dressers, actors and alcoholics all mixing together in a small patch of Midtown Manhattan not yet known for commercial glitz.

Three decades later, the photographer now lives in New Jersey, and visitors to Times Square are more likely to be asked if they want to see a Broadway show than propositioned by a prostitute.

His son Stefan decided to digitize his father's shots, keeping alive the stories of bar regulars and passersby that would be lost to history as selfie sticks became more common in the neighborhood.

While the fate of many of its customers is uncertain, Terminal Bar itself closed in 1982 after Nadelman's father-in-law and bar owner Murray Goldman decided that $125,000 a year rent was too expensive.

The building where Terminal once stood is now occupied by the New York Times, which paid $24million for its first year at the 41st and 8th Avenue juncture in 2010, according to Bloomberg.  

(dailymail.co.uk)