"I was going to begin my tales of this city with a statement about how long I've been here, but the phone rang," the Italian-American photographer Patrick D. Pagnano (1947-2018) wrote in a notebook on April 16, 1974 -- just six weeks after he and his new wife, Kari, arrived in New York City for their honeymoon.

After spending their first week at the Times Square Motor Lodge, Pat and Kari found a cosy apartment on Thompson Street in the heart of Greenwich Village, which was then home to the bustling Italian-American community. "He loved the neighbourhood," Kari says. "The Italian ladies in our building brought chairs down to sit on the stoop. There were a number of mafia-related characters that we always talked about. There was a guy on the next block, Sullivan Street, always walking up and down the sidewalk in his bathrobe."