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The Pigeon Queen of Riverside Drive

Long before the ten-million-dollar condos and the big box stores, the Upper West Side was home to Phyllis Bodyn and her pigeons.

Jill Freedman
May 07, 2013
∙ Paid
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Photos by Jill Freedman

I met Phyllis Bodyn on Riverside Drive in 1985. She was eighty-two then, “a maiden lady,” she said. She had been feeding pigeons for thirty years.

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