The blackout that nearly broke New York—and the logo that saved it

National Geographic

22-04-2025

In the summer of 1977, New York City was burning. A 25-hour blackout, triggered by lightning striking key transmission lines, led to widespread looting, riots, and more than a thousand fires.
That night alone, the fire department battled blazes across Harlem, Brooklyn, and the South Bronx, a shocking surge in a city already averaging four dozen fires a day. New York City was at an all time low.
But what saved the city wasn't a bailout or sweeping reform. It was a simple sketch—drawn in the back of a yellow cab by designer Milton Glaser. His now-iconic 'I ❤️ NY' logo became a rallying cry, a symbol of pride at a time when the city was desperate to believe in itself again. 'It was the perfect storm of need and meaning coming together,' says Steven Heller, a design historian and former New York Times art director who has chronicled the logo's cultural legacy. Milton Glaser's original 1976 sketch for the 'I ❤️ NY' logo was drawn in a taxi on the back of an envelope. The design would go on to become one of the most recognizable symbols of New York's resilience. Photograph by The Museum of Modern Art, Licensed by SCALA, Art Resource, NY Milton Glaser created this refined version of the 'I ❤️ NY' logo in 1976 using ink and tape. He originally designed it for a tourism campaign, but the symbol quickly captured the city's spirit. The Museum of Modern Art now preserves it as part of its permanent collection. Photograph by The Museum of Modern Art, Licensed by SCALA, Art Resource, NY New York's 1970s decline
New York's decline didn't happen overnight. First, the factories closed, causing 300,000 manufacturing jobs to vanish in just six years. Wealthy residents fled to the suburbs, taking with them their tax dollars. The city started borrowing money to make payroll.
Then came the budget cuts. Teachers got pink slips. Sanitation trucks sat idle as garbage rotted on street corners. 'The city was closing fire departments because it didn't have the money to maintain them,' says Ryan Purcell, a history professor at Sarah Lawrence College and the creator of the Soundscapes NYC podcast. 'They chose which neighborhoods to abandon.'
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Crime spiked to more than a thousand murders annually, and arson became a business model. 'Landlords were burning their buildings to collect insurance,' says Purcell. 'It was more profitable than collecting rent.'
The South Bronx lost more than 97 percent of its buildings on some blocks to flames and abandonment. It became the epicenter for what officials coldly called 'planned shrinkage,' a controversial urban planning strategy that pulled services from poor neighborhoods to force depopulation.
By 1975, police handed visitors pamphlets titled 'Welcome to Fear City,' at every entry point to Manhattan—Grand Central, Penn Station, Port Authority—warning tourists to stay away until things change. Subway cars were coated in graffiti and plagued by breakdowns.
When the city begged Washington for help, the Daily News captured President Ford's infamous response: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. 'If 'I Love New York' came about and nobody felt that New York was worth saving, it might not have worked,' says Heller. 'But people loved New York and wanted it to be a better place.' The 1977 New York blackout
Summer 1977 brought new horrors. The Son of Sam serial killer was taunting newspapers with chilling letters, and a sweltering heat wave pushed the power grid to its limit. At 8:37 p.m. on July 13, lightning struck a power station in Westchester County. New York went dark.
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The following 25 hours set records with a thousand fires, 1,600 stores looted, and 3,700 arrests. Damage topped $300 million. TIME magazine eventually dubbed it 'The Night of Terror,' while outside observers called New York 'the new Rome in decline.'
The blackout forced a reckoning: the city didn't just need more police or cleaner streets—it needed a comeback story. One that could make people believe in New York again. 'I [Heart] NY' origins
Faced with a full-blown image crisis, New York's Department of Commerce turned to advertising agency Wells Rich Greene with an impossible task. 'They were trying to rebrand the city away from this climate of fear,' says Purcell. What emerged would change design history.
The campaign began with three simple words: I Love New York. William S. Doyle, the state's deputy commissioner of commerce, asked native New Yorker Milton Glaser to create the visual identity. Though originally designed for a state tourism campaign, the logo quickly came to represent the city's soul.
Glaser was already a giant in the design world—co-founder of New York Magazine, the mind behind psychedelic Bob Dylan posters, and a designer who brought fine-art sensibilities to commercial work. The fee was $2,000, but Glaser never cashed the check.
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His first attempt played it safe with no symbols and clean typography. But Glaser had a breakthrough a week later, riding in a taxi. As the cab lurched between potholes, he pulled a red crayon from his pocket and sketched on the back of an envelope: bold stacked letters with 'I' on top, a red heart in the middle, and 'NY' beneath, replacing the word 'love' with the universal symbol. The inspiration came from the carved initials of young lovers in tree trunks.
'It was a visual pun,' says Heller. 'He took something so common it was almost invisible—how people wrote 'I love you' in yearbooks and greeting cards—and applied it to this definitive idea that we all love New York.' The heart carried all the weight.
What made the design extraordinary wasn't just what it said—it was how quickly it communicated feeling. In a moment of despair, it offered something rare: hope. Days after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, a New Yorker reads the Daily News featuring Milton Glaser's updated design: 'I ❤️ NY More Than Ever.' Photograph by Viviane Moos, Contributor, Getty Images How 'I [Heart] NY' became a global phenomenon
New Yorkers initially met the campaign with skepticism. 'When that slogan first appeared, Son of Sam was still killing people,' says Purcell. 'But as it filtered into municipal publications and tourism materials, people began to see the change it represented.' Hotel occupancy rose through 1978. Tourism numbers rebounded.
The design drew its power from perfect timing. 'The logo gave New Yorkers permission to show civic pride before they truly felt it,' says Purcell. Once it caught on, it wasn't just advertising. It was an act of resistance—a quiet declaration that their city was still worth loving.
Glaser gifted the design to the state, never trademarking it himself. By 2011, the logo generated $30 million a year in merchandise revenue for New York.
The logo spread organically, finding new life with each crisis. After 9/11, posters across Manhattan declared 'I ❤️ NY More Than Ever' with a small black smudge on the heart's lower left corner symbolizing the wounded downtown. During COVID, the design resurfaced again, modified but instantly recognizable.
'Milton knew [the logo] had relevance and resonance with everybody who looked at it,' says Heller. 'Like Robert Indiana's LOVE sculpture, it ended up having a life of its own.'
The logo resonated because it didn't just rebrand the city. It reminded New Yorkers that love could be a rallying cry even in collapse. A message that, as Heller says, 'will never go away.'