Times Square Today    In the last posting we saw how Times Square grew to what it is today. Let's now look at its present more closely. Times Square is the most visited place in the world with 360,000 pedestrian visitors a day, amounting to over 131 million a year. Times Square is the world's second most visited tourist attraction, behind the Las Vegas Strip. The high level of pedestrian traffic has resulted in 22 cents out of every dollar spent by visitors to NYC being spent within Times Square.

The major crosstown boulevard here is 42nd Street, so Times Square is famously pictured as being where Broadway crosses 7th Avenue "at 42nd Street". But that's not true; 42nd is merely adjacent, since the avenues really cross at 45th. As with other squares, it also gives its name to the surrounding area. Confirm that here on the HSq/TSq map we've been using:

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Pedestrian areas have become common in cities and towns around the world, and NYC has joined in. We saw how Broadway within Herald Square (including Greeley Square) was closed for this purpose, and we know that the east side of Broadway between Herald and Times Squares is now also just for pedestrians. I've heard recently that the plan is to eventually do this to one side of Broadway from Union Square to Central Park. Thus Times Square is the next obvious location for a pedestrian area, which was accomplished in the last few years:

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Times Square never was a city square in the true sense of the word. City squares in other cities and towns around the world ("square" in name only), including all those we've passed thru on Broadway, always had park areas which were augmented by the pedestrian zones. But looking at this map it becomes clear there was never a park here. Times Square has always been merely a very narrow intersection where Broadway crossed 7th Avenue in an X, and the "scissors" of that X have always been very close to being closed. There was never room for a park.
Note this contrast: Union Square, with its Park, runs from 14th to 17th.
Madison Square (and Park) runs from 23rd to 26th.
Herald Square (with Greeley Square) runs from 32nd to 35th.
But the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue is so sharp, that Times Square runs from 42nd to 47th, as this map shows. All the others are three blocks long, but Times Square is five. Quite a difference.
So the pedestrianization of Times Square does not involve connecting pedestrian zones to parks, since there aren't any. Actually, the five zones don't even connect with each other, other than via nearby sidewalks.
You'll recall that in the case of Union Square the "union" intersection of Broadway and the Bowery was obliterated centuries ago by building Union Square Park in its place. If you look at this map of Times Square again, you'll see that the place long touted, with great hyperbole, as "the crossroads of the world" no longer has a crossroads for traffic at all. 7th Avenue is the sole thoroughfare, and Broadway is only for pedestrians.

Analyze the effect, just looking at the green areas, meant for relaxation. At the bottom, the sliver of land on which the Times Tower was built is now part of the large block to its east, which runs 7th-6th-42nd-43rd, and the situation is similar all the way up to 47th.
Purple areas, which are all the pre-existing sidewalks in and around the area, are designated, oddly, "pedestrian thru zones for quick movement"--also known as "sidewalks"--tho perhaps enhanced.
You'll also note some randomly placed blue areas. They are "designated activity zones for street entertainment, vendors, and commercial activities". A better word than "designated" is "restricted", just so you get a better feeling for what's going on. Street performers, such as singers, musicians, dancers, tumblers, are one thing—they can be watched or ignored. But Times Square has become a center for costumed characters, not performing, but looking for tips nevertheless. Other things about Times Square may be just a little touristy (a dirty word for me), but a costumed character is the quintessential tourist trap.
The street sign behind this guy on a box doing a not-too-good Statue of Liberty says 45th Street (Photo by PumpkinSky). I'm not sure where his tips go. Notice the police presence. The most frequently seen character is a red Elmo, and there might be several around at once. If you want to take a picture—or an eager child's picture--with this Elmo (Photo by L Seymour), he makes it perfectly clear where the tips go, tho it's misspelled. And what's going on with Minnie Mouse? Here's Elmo and Cookie Monster together—the "performers" look out from the character's wide-open mouth (Photo by Alejandro Mallea).

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https://media.nbcmiami.com/2019/09/times-square-elmo.jpg?resize=1200%2C675

I'll offer these three more links to pictures that I don't know if I can legally embed. The first link shows characters on break, with their fake heads tilted back, probably disappointing kids. It's possible that the painted area indicates one of their restricted zones, but I'm not sure. The second link shows what it's all about—one of the many Elmos accepting a tip. This is one of the issues; there have been instances of characters getting unruly with tourists, when they didn't get a tip or not a large enough one, and the police have to get involved. The third link shows more, including Spiderman. There have also been instances of a Spiderman groping a woman and being arrested. The City tries to restrict these costumed characters, but I think it's a Freedom of Speech/Freedom of Expression issue. Anyway, that explains the restricted areas.

Northern Times Square    I find it best for discussion to split this long "square" into two parts, northern and southern Times Square, divided by the actual X intersection at 45th Street. I've found a picture of northern Times Square in 1904, the very year the Times Tower opened in the southern half. We already see a couple of electric signs, but nothing overwhelming. Broadway comes down on the left, and 7th Avenue on the right, and they still actually cross, serving both vehicular and trolley traffic. But at this date, the square had just gotten its new name and was not yet the magnet it was destined to become.

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The first link connects to 1923, looking north from 45th. The crossroads still exist for vehicles and streetcars/trolleys/trams, but what a tangle of tracks! From this picture, I'm not totally sure if the "neck" of the X is really even a traffic island yet. But neon and incandescent electric lights have taken over the night. On the left are the Astor and Gaiety we discussed before; I see a Globe, Strand, Capitol theater right on Broadway; the Ziegfeld Follies on nearby 42nd Street are advertised, and I never thought Macy's at 34th Street would be advertising on 47th. On 7th Avenue is the famous Palace Theater (using a Broadway address), and Loews State shows that cinemas (silent films) are continuing to mix with theaters.
The second link jumps to a day view in 1935 and shows the canyon-like shape of the "square"—with great hyperbole, this X was called the Crossroads of the World. This is presumably taken from the Times Tower, as 44th Street crosses from next to the Astor Hotel. Look at the vehicles crossing! Has a traffic island developed there yet? It hasn't in the center foreground yet. Note that most if not all of the signs are different, since the signage changes frequently. The Criterion Theater is the ex-1895 Olympia. Its signage seems quite static and simple, either painted signs or paper squares glued to the billboard. Note that the Hotel Claridge announces itself via two signs, one sign being above some distinguished-looking windows with an excellent view (we'll see in a moment that this will change).

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https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/1950s-looking-north-at-times-square-vintage-images.jpg

Look at these two north-view pictures together. The first dates to 1948, and the second is sometime in the 1950s. One thing we can see about this postwar period is that color pictures are becoming more frequent, but black-and-white ones are still quite popular. As for traffic, both pictures show a startling traffic change. A barrier has been put up and Times Square is no longer a crossroads! On the left, Broadway traffic in the distance connects to 7th Avenue traffic in the foreground, and on the right, 7th in the distance connects to Broadway near us. In effect, the "X" has split to a ">" and a "<". With this change, any traffic islands that had existed—I'm not sure they did yet—are now clearly defined at both the top and bottom of the split.

Both pictures show the Hotel Astor on the left. In the center, we see how frequently the signage changes—the second one shows early views of the Canadian Club and Admiral TV signs that nevertheless remained for many years. On the right, both pictures show two iconic signs we'll discuss separately below. But here we can comment that the Hotel Claridge has finally succumbed to the fact that Times Square signage is more lucrative than are rooms with a view, and you can see that the famous Camel sign has blocked two floors of windows at the Claridge. To its left, the Criterion Theater in the first picture has the iconic Bond "waterfall" ad with two white colossal nudes, which in the second picture have become two large bottles of Pepsi. (More shortly.)

One more view northbound: this is 1963 (Photo by wilford peloquin), the year after Beverly and I came back from the year in Mainz and got married. Canadian Club and Admiral are still in their incandescent bulb-flashing glory, and possibly some neon, and have been joined by Castro Convertible Sofas, who, unusually, had a showroom right below its sign. One change since is that there are still a lot more cinemas on Times Square than there are today. But now let's concentrate on that slender triangular square in front of Castro on 47th and getting narrower and narrower as it runs down to 46th.

So-Called "Duffy Square"    In talking about northern Times Square, I purposely skipped one item of interest from the 1930s, since I want to discuss it now. It involves something that happened which was, in my opinion, an error—very well intentioned, but nevertheless an error.

Francis Duffy was a Canadian-American soldier, priest, and military chaplain for the 69th Infantry Regiment (the "Fighting Irish"), a group largely drawn from the city's Irish-American community. He's best known for his service on the Western Front in France during WWI. Duffy, who typically was involved in combat and accompanied litter bearers into the thick of battle to recover wounded soldiers, became the most highly decorated cleric in the history of the US Army. After the war, in 1921, Duffy was appointed Rector, later Pastor, of the Holy Cross Church, on the north side of 42nd Street between 8th & 9th, serving the church until his death in 1932 at age 61. The current church building was completed in 1870, and is notable as the oldest building on 42nd Street. It's sometimes known informally as "Father Duffy's Church".

It's understandable that Duffy was worth being memorialized. Tho few have heard of him today, he must have been highly thought of back in the day, since, seven years after he died, a statue of him was erected and a street name change was made in his favor. But it's the location that troubles me. In 1939, the northern triangle of Times Square between Broadway and 7th Avenue, not only the wedge from 47th down to 46, but also the next sliver of a traffic island down to 45th, was renamed Duffy Square (technically Father Duffy Square), and a large statue of Duffy was placed in its center (Photo by Leonard G). The statue was dedicated by none other than Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and the name change authorized by him. To solidify this well-meant, but misdirected gesture, both the statue and name change were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

While this is now fact, it's something that "nobody knows". Ask any tourist in the northern half of Times Square—and even most locals—and they'll say they're in Times Square. Tell them they're actually technically in Duffy Square and they'll think you're trying to trick them. My point is that Times Square is the epitome of New York entertainment: theaters, cinemas, restaurants, even street performers, all amplified by major tourism. A memorial such as this statue, and the name change, is totally out of place.

I would suggest this, tho it will never happen. The name Duffy Square should be retired, and instead, the block of 42nd Street between 8th & 9th, in front of his Holy Cross Church (Photo by MoTabChoir01), should be co-named "Father Duffy Way", since today co-naming is a painless way not to lose the original street name. (Think of the section of 7th Avenue that's co-named Fashion Avenue.) The statue should also be moved, either to the church (the building to its right is the rectory and is set back with some sidewalk space) or to an appropriate park location, such as Central Park or Madison Square.

If you are dubious about this, let me continue the story of so-called Duffy Square in the decades since the renaming, because a lot more has developed around the statue.
Picture the widest part of the "triangle", on 47th street facing north. In 1973 the TKTS stand for same-day half-price theater tickets opened. Back in the day, Beverly and I would often stand in line the day of the performance to get half-price tickets. (This also helped theaters, since seats that would have gone empty were filled, tho at a lesser price.) In 1999, the booth was totally rebuilt and modernized, and a roof was added above it that formed a spectacular seating area, bleachers facing south into Times Square. This is a view from 47th due south of the TKTS stand sales area and waiting line, with stadium seating above (Photo by Ajay Suresh), while this angular view shows how the seating becomes the roof. But you go up from for the best view of the bleachers (Last Two Photos by Jim.henderson). From this angle, the Duffy memorial finds his way into the view, and from straight on, looking north the statue dominates and blocks the view.

As we said in the past, in 1999, the statue honoring George M Cohan was not put on 42nd Street, which he sang about, but in Times Square. Oops! Duffy Square. But at least he's directly next to Broadway on the left, tho it's pedestrianized today--and he was singing of Broadway in the Herald Square area—picky, picky (Last Three Photos by Beyond My Ken). But Cohan's at the southern, 46th Street, end of this mini-block, in immediate view of Duffy. It's odd how one sees statues. If you know about the person, an entertainer, a statesman, an author, whatever, you're usually drawn to the statue. But if you've never heard of someone like Duffy, deserving as he may be, one might ignore the statue, either reading—or totally ignoring—its inscription.

Climbing up onto the bleachers, one gets this perspective to the south (Photo by Hisland7). Note that this picture is from 2009, when the pedestrianization program of Broadway had barely started, so, while seating areas have begun to appear, there is still full southbound traffic on Broadway itself on the right. Looking past the Duffy Statue, the Cohan statue is barely visible over it and to its right, down on 46th. That next sliver of a traffic island down to 45th is still technically "Duffy Square".

Let's turn back north for one last look at what I see as the Duffy statue and name, tho well intentioned, being totally out of place (Photo by Jim.henderson). The Palace theater, until its present reconstruction, when it changed its address to 47th Street, had a façade on 7th Avenue. However, it "reached over" to Broadway and used that as an address. Why would it ever have said it's on Duffy Square? The name is totally ignored, as an address and as a place name, and is to most people, unknown. This last picture especially shows that this is a disrespected and ignored war hero in the circus atmosphere of what everyone considers to still be the northern part of Times Square. I continue to believe that the name and statue should be moved to his nearby church, but know of no movement to do so.

Southern Times Square    As we've seen in earlier pictures, the Times Tower has always been the main drawing attraction in the square, not only in the southern part but in its entirety—the bleachers were built to give a view the length of the Square down to the ex-Times Tower.

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The first link shows a southern view in the 1920s from alongside the Criterion Theater. There are tracks on both Broadway (left) and 7th Avenue. Tho no longer the second tallest in the city, the Times Tower stands regally slender at its two distinctively different heights, reflecting the buildings it replaced. The word "Times" is on top, and the Ball Drop pole is visible. The miniscule traffic island in the next block lies before it, which, decades later, would be widened and accommodate the recruiting station. Across 7th, we see a display of simple painted or papered billboards, which contrasts with the more modern electric-bulb signs the Criterion uses. Tho I'm not sure any neon signs are seen here yet, neon had its golden age from the '20s to the '60s.
The second link (click) looks south in the 1930s. Cinemas have appeared, such as Loew's State, and across, the Gaiety and Astor, followed by the Hotel Astor. The Times Tower retains its elegance.


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The first view here moves to the 1950s. Both Astor buildings are on the right, the State and Criterion are on the left, and above is the huge Bond Clothing sign with the two nudes.
The second view, in the 1960s, shows the end of an era, the end of elegance. It must be before 1963, when we lost the Times Tower. The Hotel Astor is still there, and the Claridge on the left has its Camel sign in red.

Mid-Century Signage    We've watched signage become iconic for Times Square. The first, early phase we saw above, with the simplest painted signs, perhaps later enhanced by incandescent bulbs and neon. The second phase was back when Times Square still managed to hold on to some elegance and had some upscale signage, exciting in its day, with some signs that were particularly famous. In the third phase, as of the 1990s, digital took over, spectacularly, tho all elegance was lost. We'll see about that below.

I've been touching on two of the more spectacular mid-century signs, so let's finally talk about them. We've seen pictures similar to this next one, where both signs appear:

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We're again talking about, on the east side of Times Square, the red Camel sign having taken over the Claridge hotel façade at the right (a sign apparently was more lucrative), and, right next to it, the Bond Clothes spectacular taking up the entire block between 44th and 45th. These signs were so famous that they were themselves tourist attractions. Given the dates I've discovered for the signs, this view had to have been taken between 1948 and 1954, when changes came about. Toward the end of that period I'd become a teenager, and started exploring my way around Manhattan. Later, tho changes had taken place, I remember showing them to Beverly on our trips into Manhattan.

You can't discuss the middle phase of Times Square signage in the mid-20C without mentioning Douglas Leigh, who moved to NYC from the South in 1930. He was an advertising executive, lighting designer, and a pioneer in the field of outdoor signage, known for making Times Square the site of some of the world's most famous neon signs and electric billboards. Many of the breathtaking signs he designed and erected were also mechanical and "did things". (He also designed the colored lighting scheme for the Empire State Building.)

His first eye-catching creation was a "steaming" billboard for A&P in 1933, at the southeast corner of 47th Street and 7th Avenue advertising the store's Eight O'Clock Coffee. It had clouds of steam actually physically emanating from a large cup of coffee, 25 ft (7.6 m) high and 15 ft (4.6 m) wide.

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This is NOT that original sign, but a similar one put up perhaps in 1993-4 (as you see, at 46th Street instead). This was a replica of one of the first spectacular billboards on Times Square.

Times Square billboards change even more frequently than theater names change—it's a ongoing recycling of wall space. It's a constant build, then destroy and rebuild. Thus, I may have seen the above replica, tho I'm not sure. I may or may not have seen some of the following Douglas Leigh signs, or their descendants. I cannot find any pictures of them:

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Kool cigarettes used Willie the (Smoking) Penguin as a mascot from 1934 to 1960. Above is a collectible antique cigarette lighter using the image. Douglas Leigh's electric sign featured a blinking penguin.
Ballantine Beer used three interlocking rings as a logo. Leigh's sign had clowns playing ringtoss, tossing rings onto a peg.
Bromo-Seltzer (Photo by Cindy Shebley) was a headache remedy added to water, making it fizz in a glass. Leigh's sign apparently showed actual effervescent action.

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But to my mind, there were two billboards that were very special and particularly spectacular. Not only did I regularly see them both for the time they existed, but back in the day, I made sure I went to take another look at them again whenever I was in Times Square. I have my own names for them: the Smoke Rings sign and the Waterfall sign.

THE SMOKE RINGS    This was still the era when smoking was considered OK, if not elegant, so keep that in mind. A mid-century fixture of Times Square is what is usually called the Camel sign, which Douglas Leigh designed in 1941 and which existed to 1966. But for me it's the memorable Smoke Rings sign (Photo by Jim Evans), on the Hotel Claridge on the southeast corner of 44th & Broadway. The sign was 30 ft (9 m) high and 100 ft (30.5 m) long.

Look carefully. Much of it is typical for the era. The face is painted, and repainted periodically with a new face. Incandescent bulbs and neon are everywhere. But look at the figure's mouth; it actually blew "smoke rings" out into the street! You can see a disintegrating smoke ring appearing to be below the letters "Ca-". The 5 ft (1.5 m) rings came out every four seconds, and were usually perfectly round, tho easily affected by breezes. This picture dates from 1965, a year before the demise of the sign.

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Of course it wasn't real smoke, tho some online sources do call it that. It was steam brought up from Con Edison steam pipes serving the hotel and then, as this link shows, forced out every four seconds via a motor-run canvas diaphragm in a cone. Click on the right side for further details. The smoke rings sign was possibly in its time, the most famous sign in Times Square, and certainly the most iconic (Photo by Willem van de Poll).

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Above is an original pencil drawing of the sign, and other photos that went into the planning. During WWII, as one of the small pictures shows, the man depicted was alternated periodically as a soldier, sailor, or airman.

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The first link shows again a military man in the sign, with different wording. (Note on the left the Bond sign across 44th Street—see below.) The second link is from 1955 and, again with different wording, the military theme continues as it shows comedian Phil Silvers as his TV character Sergeant Bilko.

Watch this short (0:19) YouTube video of the Smoke Rings sign. It's the best one I could find, but it's very odd, as it seems to be some sort of replica hanging in outer space. But it does show how the sign worked. Finally, look at this gem of a picture:

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It's a view you're not supposed to see—painters on a scaffold are repainting the face for the next version of the sign. I like to think of it as the most famous hole-in-the-wall in Times Square.

THE WATERFALL    This one is almost as famous, and was right next door to the previous one. It's officially called the Bond sign, but that lasted only a few years. Then it got a second life with another advertiser. It had two outstanding features. To me the most spectacular was that it had a waterfall, with real water pouring down a slope almost a block long, so The Waterfall is how I remember it. However, I also had two huge nude statues, which also caught your eye. I've checked the background of this sign.

While most signs had been just add-ons to existing buildings, in 1936, a bank built a two-story building on Broadway between 44th and 45th with a "normal" sign on top that more than doubled the height of the building, which was trim, streamline moderne in style (curves, sleek long lines), and which included a theater, stores, and a vast nightclub, the International Casino. But the nightclub lasted only four years, and in 1940 Bond Clothes took over much of the space. An architect designed a new front with red granite panels and glass blocks. By this time, Douglas Leigh already had made a name for himself, based on his steaming coffee cup and Camel's smoke rings.

In 1948, he persuaded Bond to replace the previous sign by financing an astounding, expensive, huge, 90 ft (27 m)-high sign above and along the full one-block length—200 ft (61 m)--of its low-lying clothing store, which seemed to act like a stage for the sign. The sign—almost a stage setting—became famous enough so that postcards of it were sold, of which we have two.
This is the Bond Waterfall Sign by day, and this is the Bond Waterfall Sign by night.
There's so much to see that it's hard to know where to look first. Again, we're on the east side of Broadway; that's 45th on the left and 44th on the right; Camel's Smoke Rings sign is just off to the right. You see the red granite and glass block façade put up by the architect when he remodeled the space. Between that and the "stage setting" above is an electric news zipper in constant motion, about 5 ft (1.5 m) high, with 23,250 bulbs.
Now what catches your eye up above first? For me it's the waterfall, almost a block long. That's not a picture, it's real water cascading down a slope. If the traffic wasn't too noisy, you could actually hear the rush of flowing water on Times Square! The waterfall was 27 ft (8.2 m) high and 132 ft (40 m) long. 50,000 gallons (189,000 liters) of water kept recycling down a wall by 23 giant pumps on the roof. I suspect the wall beneath the flowing water was painted in such a way as to enhance the aquatic effect.
But then you see the two huge nude statues on either side, a man on the north side, a woman on the south side. At night, neon strips across their torsos seem to "clothe" them. Topping everything is a digital clock advertising Bond. The figures are 50 ft (15 m) tall. The combination of all these numerous elements in one big display made the sign perhaps the most ambitious one NYC has ever seen.

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https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/the-bond-clothing-store-on-broadway-in-times-square-new-york-city-picture-id1250731216?s=612x612

These are two more real-photo pictures of the Waterfall Sign while it still advertised Bond. Which leads me to the next development. All good things come to an end, but that happened only gradually with the Waterfall Sign. In October 1954 it went dark—and dry. Bond still existed, but apparently decided to no longer fund the sign. But a new sponsor took over—Pepsi Cola, and Leigh designed a modification of the sign for Pepsi. But the only thing maintained was—thank goodness—the waterfall, which is why I prefer to call this the Waterfall Sign, since it served two different masters. But as for the rest of the huge sign, hold on to your hat:

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The waterfall was restarted for the successor version of the sign, but the statues were replaced by two equally huge Pepsi bottles, and the digital clock was replaced by a colossal Pepsi bottle cap (UK: bottle top). But at least the waterfall still graced Times Square. Still, the Pepsi version also lasted just a few years, after which it was followed by a series of totally uninteresting replacements. And, alas, no waterfall.

To close this section on mid-century sign spectaculars, we have some video. This one (4:12) shows electric signs from 1929 to 1947.
0:19 – note the Planters "peanuts" cascading;
2:34 – here are the Canadian Club and Admiral signs we mentioned earlier at the northern end of Times Square;
2:51 – the Little Lulu cartoon character moves her arm to seemingly pull out a neon Kleenex "tissue".

This video (2:49, no audio) jumps a decade to show 1957. You'll notice some mechanical effects supplemented by neon and incandescent bulbs—only much later came LED lighting and jumbotron screens.
0:41 Phil Silvers again blows Camel smoke rings;
0:55 the Kleenex neon sign has been modified (nothing remains the same on Times Square);
1:07 with the Pepsi version, we finally get to see what the waterfall looked like;
1:33 we finally get to see the iconic neon top of the Times Tower;
1:45 close-up of incandescent bulb effect in the Pepsi bottle cap and a closer view of the waterfall. (The video leaves the area at 1:55. )

Times Tower – Decline    We now come to the saddest story on this subject. We saw how eager the New York Times was in 1904, with its new building, the square named after it, and the subway station below it to draw crowds. We saw pictures of the building and square in the early years, when the view was one of elegance. But as we know, the Times Tower had a fatal flaw that the newspaper perhaps chose to overlook—tho iconic in style, and the second-tallest building in NYC when it was built, it was just too small, and in 1913 the Times had to move to its so-called Annex on 43rd Street, which was now in reality its de facto home. The Times maintained ownership of the iconic Times Tower, which, tho it had only a couple of Times news departments housed in it, with other offices leased out, remained the nexus of Times Square. But it was also a white elephant, and supposedly the Times felt it could hold on to the iconic, yet negative asset only just so long. And so the Times sold the building in 1961, an event that turned out, after a short while, to be tantamount to a death notice for the building as it had existed for almost six decades.

It will surely be a surprise to find out that the Times sold the Times Tower in 1961 to sign designer Douglas Leigh (!!), who apparently had been trying to buy it for some 25 years. By that time, there were a surprising 110 tenants in the building; given the small size of the building, each tenant must have had a very small office. The Times itself at that point only had two connections to the building: it still operated the zipper news feed and had a small advertising office at ground level. This 1962 view is the last picture I've found of the Times Tower in its original state, still quite majestic.

It seems that Leigh had planned to construct some sort of an exhibition hall within the building, which apparently didn't work out, since Leigh then sold the building in April 1963 to Allied Chemical, a horribly unfortunate turn of events for preservationists.

Actually, Allied Chemical had wanted to tear the building down entirely and replace it with a larger building to be used as a sales headquarters and showroom, but due to recent changes to NYC zoning laws, any replacement building could not be as tall as the original building had been, so they decided in 1963 to "renovate" the Times Tower instead. This would not be a simple renovation, but rather a total gutting of the building. They stripped the building down to its steel frame. I have no pictures from this period, but we've seen the steel frame under construction in 1904, so use your imagination. They then replaced the intricate granite and terracotta façade with white marble panels, top to bottom. I have likened the situation at this point as burying a skeleton in a sarcophagus.

The modifications—read "plundering"--occurred one year before the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission gained the power to protect buildings as official landmarks, leading architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable (of the Times—I always used to follow her) to express opposition to the renovation. Huxtable praised the original building, saying that it was full of "vintage structural details".

Allied Chemical reactivated the news zipper on the building's façade in March 1965, and that December, adding insult to injury, the Times Tower was officially rededicated as the Allied Chemical Tower.
In 1966 a restaurant—now long gone--with a 16C English theme known as Act I opened on the 15th and 16th floors. At about the same time, the USPS went so far as to change the building's address from 1475 Broadway to the vanity address of One Times Square. Other nearby buildings have been since similarly named, in no sensible order and with no way to find them without an actual street address. I now find that Two Times Square is at the northern end of Times Square in that block facing the TKTS booth. Three Times Square faces One Times Square to the west across 7th Avenue in the area where the Hammerstein Ballroom used to be. These vanity numbers then ramble on and on. You cannot find these vanity addresses without looking up the actual street address. It's crazy.

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This is the "sarcophagus" in 1972 with the new name. Click for details, and inspect the famous news zipper, and note that there are (still) no ads on the building. But here's the kicker. Shortly after the "renovation" was completed, Allied Chemical suddenly decided it didn't need the space anymore and in 1972, put the building up for sale!

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Here's a better view looking south from 45th Street. It's undated, but the Allied Chemical name has already been removed from the top (click), and signs have already appeared, covering the white marble.

For the next couple of decades, ownership flip-flopped between numerous owners, while it continued to be used as an office building into the 1980s. Then, in 1995, Lehman Brothers acquired the building. Lehman's contribution to further decline was to take advantage of its prime location within Times Square by adding numerous billboards over the white marble, which in turn lay over the original steel skeleton. It was sort of like a shroud over the sarcophagus, which was over the body. At this point, the entire exterior of One Times Square above the zipper was modified to add a grid frame for mounting billboard signs. Obviously, the massive signs blocked windows, so the last office tenants moved out in 1996 as the billboards arrived. Lehman apparently felt that for such a small building, billboards paid a lot more than office rentals.

Ownership changed again in 1997, when Jamestown LP acquired it, a possible turnaround. (More on that will follow below.) But do note that filings related to that sale revealed that the billboards on the tower had been generating a net revenue of $7 million yearly, representing an amazing 300% profit over costs, making One Times Square one of the most valuable advertising locations in the world. But the cultural cost is that the building is dead, and is nothing more than a support for signs. During the first two decades of the 21C it only housed a single office tenant, the production company in charge of the Ball Drop.

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This is a startling three-way photo. It's not the "Three Faces of Eve" but the Three Faces of the Times Tower-cum-One Times Square. It now looks even worse because there's a taller building behind it that overwhelms it, as seen here in 2010 (Photo by Bernt Rostad, edited by Yarl). But as mentioned above, a turnaround seems to be coming.

Southern Times Square (Cont'd)    Perhaps the only positive thing I can say about the Allied Chemical sarcophagus was that it altered the view of southern Times Square.

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The first link shows an evening view in the early 1970s when it still had its name up top (Cohan has his back to us); the second shows a daytime view in the 1980s, sans name. In both, the pale white ghost seems out of place. We also have a view in 2009 from the bleachers showing the full length of Times Square (Photo by Terabass). Traffic is on the left and pedestrians have now taken over the foreground, and Broadway on the right. We're looking over the Duffy statue (click to see Cohan over the left shoulder). What's now called One Times Square has been totally taken over by signs—no white marble left showing--up to the ball up top over the year; the building behind it hulks as it diminishes it.

Here's another contemporary view, standing on pedestrianized Broadway and looking south from 46th Street (Photo by Mariordo). The signage now consumes the view. What used to be the Times Tower, the magnet for the area, is now an empty building, and serves just a stand to hold up the very lucrative electric signs. It doesn't seem to even stand free from the other buildings as the signage absorbs it into one large illuminated continuum. To make sure you're looking at it, dwarfed by the building behind it, you have to locate the Ball Drop up top over the year 2012.

Third Generation Signs    The earliest signs were painted or on paper. Then came neon and electric lights. Since the signs change constantly, much of what had remained became obsolete and out of fashion. Since the 1990s, we've been in the third generation of signs, dominated by television and computer screen cultures.

As the new technology arrived, another event affected signage. We're perhaps used to laws being passed restricting billboards, such as those along highways that spoil rural views. But in the special case of Times Square, just the reverse happened.

In 1987, the City Planning Commission adopted a regulation that required large new developments in Times Square to set aside about 5% of their space for "entertainment uses", which would include large, bright signs. I looked up the exact wording: "No building permit shall be issued without prior submission of drawings showing that the sign requirements related to surface area, location and number of signs have been met, plus appropriate electrical power." There were specifics that gave dimensions, height, and location above street level. Apparently, they didn't want the Great White Way of Broadway to go dark! But reviewing the rules, I was taken aback by one specification. Referring to Times Square specifically (and not to the adjacent theatrical block of 42nd Street) it proscribed signage on Broadway and 7th Avenue. The stretch of those streets covered went north to 50th Street—perhaps a few blocks more than I might have expected—but as far south as 43rd Street, which was a surprise. It specifically seemed to want to avoid One Times Square (the ex-Times Tower), but in doing so, it also avoided the facing blocks of 7th and of Broadway (see TSq map). Of course, they still have signage, anyway. I don't know what they had in mind in 1987, but the lack of a requirement would allow for the shroud of billboards to be removed from the sarcophagus.

Anyway, the new requirement coincided with the third generation of signage. As for the television influence, there have been jumbotron screens to show news events, this sign probably at 43rd Street (Photo by Webcam). Here's one selling candy at 48th Street (Photo by Mepatm). And we hardly need to point out that these three jumbotrons adorn the north side of One Times Square (Photo by Sallicio). These all may have been replaced since the pictures were taken—nothing lasts in Times Square.

I personally recall a couple of years ago a large jumbotron on the east side of the Square showing a TV view downward of the Square and people walking. As I was strolling up the west side of the Square I looked up and saw myself in the distance—I waved to be sure it was me, and I wasn't the only one.

But possibly even more major, and more indicative of the third generation, are all the LED signs that have been appearing. Look here at the YouTube video (0:46) of the Morgan Stanley LED display. Pause it immediately at about 0:04 before the air is sucked out of your lungs by this attention-getter. A question: can you call it a sign when it consumes the whole building? I just now called it a display. And what's that puny, insignificant thing on the left in blue and red? It was once the Times Tower. You can barely make out the Ball Drop pole on its roof. You can't see 7th Avenue from this angle, so it looks like the building and its signs are glued onto the buildings on the right.

Now look at these displays (1:24). Pause it at 0:55 at Barclay's. This was a display early on that overwhelmed me one evening returning from dinner with friends. I was waiting for my bus home on the west side of 7th between 50th and 49th and this sign across the street just swept me away. I couldn't stop looking at it. It was my introduction to the extra-spectacular displays.

While some are abstract designs, many show 3-D figures, such as this polar bear, in a sign that bends around a corner (0:21). You'll also notice that below, the display for eyeglasses also shows waves of movement.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/11/17/233EA23700000578-2837805-Prime_real_estate_The_giant_LED_screen_is_operated_by_Clear_Chan-10_1416255753641.jpg

The Daily Mail in the UK published this picture online of a sign on the Marriott Marquis Hotel on the west side of Times Square between 45th and 46th Streets. It's the world's largest digital billboard and is 100 m (330 ft) long and eight stories high. It's ranked as the priciest outdoor advertising spot in the US, and rents for over $2.5 million dollars for four weeks, coming to $32 million a year. While the picture makes it look static, this whale video shows what it can do. Note the year 2021 up at the Ball Drop. Even Cohan in the foreground seems to be impressed by the display. (In some following views, this display, no matter what picture it's showing, is identifiable by its large size, as well as the name Marriott Marquis clearly showing.)

Let's walk across the street for more 3-D here (0:15-1:20).
Pause at the beginning. This is the northeast corner of 7th Avenue (left) and 47th Street (right), right across from the TKTS booth and bleachers. (After 0:44 the bleachers are more visible.) That seems to be the Palace Theater under reconstruction at the right. Apparently a character from the video game Fortnite is dressed up in Balenciaga clothes, advertising them both. I have not personally seen this, and it's probably as temporary as a TV ad. I find the display spectacular, tho overwhelming and unsettling.

I have some info about the financing of these displays, tho they're not cheap. All Times Square signs have millions of eyeballs staring at them thruout the year, and even more so on New Year's Eve for the Ball Drop, when people stand around for hours with little to do but look at ads. And of course all those eyeballs point at all times toward the former Times Tower, and the façade they see is ironically the smallest one, the one that would have been a point if the building had been a triangle, but was cut off. Note the following:

https://i.insider.com/50e1b26c6bb3f7075a00000f?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp

Just look at the annual dollar amounts to rent these signs. In any case, I would have expected the top one to have been the most expensive, since everyone looks up at the ball, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Midnight Moment    Something's apparently been going on in Times Square for about a decade, and I knew nothing about it until doing this present research. Every night, from 11:57 p.m. to midnight, some 90+ electronic billboards at Times Square switch over, for just three minutes, from advertisements to a synchronized digital art installation. (This apparently excludes the three minutes on New Year's Eve so the Ball Drop can take place.) A group called Times Square Arts curates the Midnight Moment displays, selecting a different artist to feature each month. It would seem to me that when I've been in the Times Square area for the theater or for dinner with friends, we're ready to go home before this short exhibit takes place. Midnight Moment is billed as the world's largest and longest-running digital public art program. Well, live and learn.

YouTube has several examples of this, from which I've chosen two. This first one (1:00) ran for the month of February 2022. Pause it right at the beginning. I chose this one to start with because the design is simple, and allows us to marvel at seeing over 90 electric displays all coordinated, showing the same thing. Immediately identifiable are the slender north side of One Times Square and the oversized display of the Marriott Marquis (which is also named). We can tell this shot is from the bleachers, since we can see the back of the Duffy monument.

This display by Krista Kim is called "Continuum" showing a spectrum of moving colors. The comment below calls it "a soothing visual meditation presented on a monumental scale [where] a slowly shifting gradient of color washes over Times Square, creating a moment of calm amidst one of the most visually kinetic places in the world."
The other one I've chosen (2:58) is also particularly colorful, but shows more visual structure. It's from July 2022 and is called "Slipstream Times Square" by Nancy Baker Cahill. The comment below says that it "transfigures the bewildering, dizzying energy of Times Square thru a vibrant, abstract artwork that calls to mind a surreal canyon that moves like an ocean."
Pause it at 0:50, and you'll recognize the same pair of displays that we just saw with a polar bear and eyeglasses. At 2:29 we see what is normally the Nasdaq display on a curved façade. I've seen several iterations of it, online and in reality, and the thing that is so memorable for me is that all displays dance around what seem to be real windows.

The    Many cities and towns have a central square where people tend to congregate. Other than maybe Bowling Green and City Hall Park, Manhattan never really had a place such as this. I recently learned that prior to Times Square, New Yorkers tended to gather on New Year's Eve around Trinity Church on Broadway at Wall Street. Manhattan doesn't seem to have had such a gathering place for spontaneous events until the New York Times planned them for Times Square, along with planned New Year's events.

In early November 1904, two months before the first New Year's in Times Square (see below) and prior to the Times Tower's completion, the Times brought attention to its new building by using searchlights from the top of the Times Tower to indicate the presidential election results, as well as those of other contests. Two days before the November 8 election, the Times ran an article explaining how it would announce the results. Describing its building as a "lofty tower" the article said that "on account of the great height of the Times Building, the signal station being over 412 feet [125.6 m] over tidewater, the signals will be readily distinguishable anywhere within a radius of thirty miles [48 km] from Times Square."

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/05/pageoneplus/ITT-WEB-06/ITT-WEB-06-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale

Above is the explanatory illustration published in the paper. A steady light westward meant Theodore Roosevelt had been re-elected; eastward meant his opponent, Alton B Parker. Steady lights northward or southward told who'd been elected NYS Governor. Lights also indicated the composition of the new US House of Representatives; a westward light moving up and down meant it had gone Republican, and an eastward one up and down meant it had become Democratic. The article pointed out that the searchlight signals made it easy for an interested voter who "didn't want to stay out all night at a telegraph office" (!!) for election results. This is eye-opening in today's world of instant news, where voters can even follow the ongoing tally of votes. Picture otherwise running down to your local telegraph office to follow messages coming in!

The Times also boasted in that article that the Park Row Building (the tallest at the time) was only a little more than 3 ft (1 m) taller than its own Times Tower. It mentions several New Jersey and Westchester towns that should be able to see the lights.
It also adds that at the Times Tower, there would be bulletin displays (this was a quarter-century before the news zipper surrounded the building), one on the south side and one on the north, and that a noted band of the day would be performing at the building. This was all repeated in the 1908 election with Taft north, Bryan south, and east and west for the two candidates for Governor of NYS.

We can jump ahead a bit to a particularly famous World Series, when this gathering took place in Times Square. It was October 1919, when thousands assembled to get World Series results from a remote mechanical scoreboard (that white square against the narrow façade). I'm not a sports fan, but, since it's part of American history, even I know that that was the year of the World Series "Black Sox" scandal, when eight Chicago White Sox players were accused of fixing the games, in Cincinnati, against the Cincinnati Reds, and were later banned from baseball. Here's a quick (3:38) colorized summary of the scandal. At 1:26, you can see how the interesting mechanical scoreboard pictured above in Times Square worked, updated live--by telegraph, of course.

While this is not meant to be a comprehensive list of when people spontaneously gathered in Times Square, I have found another instance of note. Two years after the baseball scandal, a boxing match was held between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier from France (shown here before the fight), one of several fights referred to as the Fight of the Century. It took place on 2 July 1921 across the Hudson in Jersey City NJ.

We can say right off that Dempsey won, but the point here is the difficulty of the public finding out what was going on at all these events of interest. We saw the mechanical scoreboard used for the baseball game, updated by telegraph. How primitive that seems today. As it turns out, this boxing match was the first ever broadcast over radio, which became standard for boxing until the advent of TV.

A special radio transmitter was built that was said to be the largest ever built to that time. While the match was in Jersey City, the transmitter was set up in the Lackawanna Train Terminal in nearby Hoboken (now Hoboken Terminal). RCA operated a temporary (one day?) Hoboken longwave radio station, WJY, that picked up the signal which was transmitted to theaters, halls, and auditoriums in 61 US cities. This marked RCA's entry into radio broadcasting, which it dominated for the next half-century. (But the telegraph was not totally out of the picture yet. The details of the fight were also telegraphed to KDKA in Pittsburgh, then broadcast from there by a local announcer.)

This is the announcer broadcasting from ringside on WJY (does JY stand for Jersey?) There are several things in this fabulous cultural icon of a picture that just scream "1921". He's wearing pince-nez. He has what is obviously a detachable starched collar (see 2017/7, Troy "Collar City"). But mostly, in this early radio broadcast, it seems they hadn't worked out microphones yet!. He's broadcasting using a candlestick telephone, so typical of the time!

Now this is the scene in front of the Times Tower during the fight. It's from the Times Photo Archive and is labeled: "More than 10,000 gather in Times Square outside the New York Times building to receive updates on the fight between boxers Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier in July, 1921." There's no doubt about the year, because you've never seen so many straw hats at once, which also shows the crowd is male. It's hard to know how the updates were given. Was WJY on loudspeakers? Did a local guy announce what he heard on the radio? I don't know.

If a sports fan wanted more beyond what he'd read in the papers, he could go to the movies and see it on film, as this film poster indicates. Read the line: "5 Reels of Terrific Action". But that would be days later. Experiencing the event "live" in the local "village square" would be more exciting.

To continue attracting people to the "village square", in 1928, the Times installed a large lighted news ticker just above its third floor that was referred to as the zipper. It was first used on 6 November that year to announce that Herbert Hoover had just been elected president. The words were 5 ft (1.5 m) high, the entire four-sided sign was 368 ft (112 m) long, and consisted of 14,800 light bulbs, with the message scrolling endlessly around the building.

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You can see that this is taken at 43rd Street, so we're looking at the narrow façade, with the Times's motto on the 7th Avenue side.

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In 1945, right after President Truman spoke, the zipper jubilantly announced at 7:03 PM: OFFICIAL—TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER, seen here from 42nd Street.

After The Times sold the Times Tower in 1961, the sign was rebuilt and sponsored in turn by Life magazine, then Newsday, then Dow Jones, which dismantled the bulb assembly in 1997 and replaced it with a digital zipper. About half of the original zipper was donated to the Museum of the City of New York, with the rest scrapped.

WWII ended as we know in two stages, and both times, Times Square served as Manhattan's village square, with people spontaneously rushing to celebrate there.

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This is Victory in Europe (V-E) Day in Times Square, Tuesday, 8 May 1945. The first link is looking north, since the Bond sign is on the right. The second link ("Nazis Quit!") is looking south, toward the updated Rialto on 42nd.

About three months later, the "second shoe" fell with Victory over Japan (V-J) Day, and the crowds filled the Square again. I recognize this as being right under the Smoke Rings sign with the Waterfall across 44th Street.

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This view of the dense crowds looks north, with the Astor Hotel on the left and the Bond sign on the right. This is the earlier, original Bond sign, since the waterfall and two statues wouldn't appear for three more years, in 1948.
A note on date discrepancies. V-J Day occurred on 15 August 1945 in Japan and the Western Pacific, but because of the International Dateline, it was still 14 August 1945 when it was announced in the Eastern Pacific Islands, and in the US and the rest of the Americas. The UK uses the 15th. But the formal surrender was on 2 September, which Truman declared to be official.

I'll make the comment at this point that this seems to have been the end of the spontaneous crowds suddenly rushing to Times Square (again, New Year's is not spontaneous, nor are occasional demonstrations). With radio, TV, and computers, people don't seem to see the need as much for celebrating at a central location as they once did.

Most Famous Photo    What is surely the most famous photo ever taken in Times Square should be mentioned at this point. We've all seen it, and it's become iconic around the world. Hint: it's not of a building, nor does it show a large crowd. Any ideas? Curiously, it's official name really is "V-J Day in Times Square". Get it yet?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Legendary_kiss_V%E2%80%93J_day_in_Times_Square_Alfred_Eisenstaedt.jpg

The iconic photo with that name is of course the above one. It's copyrighted up the wazoo, which is why I'm not linking to it, just allowing readers, as usual, to fetch their own copy. It was shot just south of 45th Street looking north, with the early Bond sign on the right. It was taken by the famous photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, on 14 August 1945 for Life Magazine, and published with the caption "In New York's Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers". He was in the US Navy, and she was a total stranger, and white-clad because she was a dental hygienist. Life published it a week later in a twelve-page section of many victory celebrations around the US. On that particular two-page spread, the left-hand page had three similar photos from around the country, while this photo covered a full page on the right side.

As mentioned above, the zipper published Truman's announcement at 7:03 PM, which was much-anticipated. It's been estimated that this picture was shot at 5:51 PM, which would place it just before the official announcement. Eisenstaedt said he was photographing rapidly changing scenes at that time, and didn't get a chance to note down names and details. Neither person's face is really visible, and many people have claimed to be these two people.

Eisenstaedt told the story this way. He saw a sailor running along grabbing and kissing every woman in sight. Eisenstaedt got ahead of him and was looking back, but no possible views pleased him. Then the sailor reached this woman, and the contrast between his dark, navy blue uniform and her white outfit struck him as giving the photo extra impact. He took four pictures of the pair, but he felt only this one was just right.

Numerous people have come forth, claiming to be the two individuals. Extensive research has been done, and two most likely people have been named, but it's really too vague and unsure.

It was, of course, a different time, and original interpretations were based on the jubilation of the day. In 1997, an art critic summarized the view as being reflective of that mood: the sailor representing returning troops, the nurse representing those welcoming them, and Times Square standing for home.

This next photo took place five decades later and shows German-born Alfred Eisenstaedt (Photo by William Waterway Marks) signing a "V-J Day" print on the afternoon of 23 August 1995, for his friend, who took the picture. The location is Eisenstaedt's vacation cabin at Menemsha Inn on Martha's Vineyard. Eisenstaedt died in the cabin about eight hours later, shortly after midnight, on the 24th, at age 96.

First we'll talk about the fame of the iconic image, then about some obvious controversy. I have a few examples.
In Spain, Valencia has an annual five-day celebration in March called Las Fallas, reminiscent of Mardi Gras, where oversized figures of paper and wax, wood, or polystyrene foam are displayed, then eventually burned in the end. This is a falla (in front of a number of others), constructed in 2016, of the kiss (Photo by Joanbanjo). That's 71 years after the event—people don't forget an iconic image.

In Fairlay Street in the Ibrox suburb of Glasgow there appeared this graffito inspired by the famous photo (Photo by Daniel Naczk). It's a supposedly humorous satirical pose involving an unlikely role reversal. However, it could be considered that it avoids the controversy surrounding the original photo where the sailor used a headlock, and this one does not, making it appear consensual.

An artist has designed a series of huge computer-generated statues named Unconditional Surrender that resemble the photo. They've been in bronze, aluminum, and styrofoam (!) versions, all 25 ft (7.6 m) tall. They've been temporarily installed in several US locations—this is an aluminum version in Sarasota (Photo by Elisa.rolle). One copy even made it via San Diego to Times Square in 2005 (it's copyrighted, so fetch it yourself.)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1c/Unconditional_Surrender_sculpture_Aug_13_2015.jpg

The 65th anniversary of V-J day fell on 14 August 2010, and a special publicity stunt was planned. First, another copy was set up of the large statue in Times Square, and then numerous loving couples, both married and not, were each handed a sailor cap and rose and urged to do the obvious, which resulted in this scene at the statue:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/7f/ab/397fab410691e0543294398e01300349.jpg

As to the controversy; one obvious issue has been frequently mentioned, to which I add two of my own. All involve hard questions to answer.
(1) Would this have happened today, even during a time of celebration? Surely a man doing this today would be considered to have assaulted the woman, plus all the other women he'd kissed earlier, all strangers kissed nonconsensually. The action itself, combined with the bemused expressions on some of the bystanders in 1945, have been described as emblematic of a time when women were "subordinated to men", underlined by that headlock. Of course that graffito in Glasgow is a great satire of that kind of thinking.
(2) Eisenstaedt said that the sailor had been kissing many women, young and old. Given the era, he didn't have to say "all the white women", as the sailor's unlikely to have kissed non-white women, if any had even been there. Would that be different today?
(3) Let's jump ahead to the 2010 reënactment. It can be assumed that all the loving couples participating, married and not, were hetero. True, same-sex marriage wasn't legally recognized in New York State until the following year, on 24 July 2011. But what would happen today? Would male-male or female-female loving couples, married or not, be invited to participate?
As I said, these are three tough questions, all reflecting on contemporary society. A possible answer to the last issue will appear below.

Renewal of Ex-Times Tower/One Times Square    Let's give a final update of the story of the ex-Times Tower, now called One Times Square. I will again admit I've been unaware that this has been going on, altho I did witness it in person a few weeks ago. We said earlier that back in 1997, Jamestown LP acquired the structure, but I hadn't heard of what it's been doing until working on the present research. By renewal I don't mean going back to the original Times Tower of 1904, nor to the white marble Allied Chemical sarcophagus of 1963. Jamestown seems to be on the way to bring the structure back to life in its third iteration, hopefully for good.

I find that Jamestown LP is a real-estate investment and management company based in Atlanta specializing in US properties, of which it has many besides One Times Square. In 2011 it acquired Chelsea Market (see 2017/8) and developed it, and in 2018 sold it, tripling its investment. It has investments in Boston's Back Bay area. In 2013 it acquired the retail portion of Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, and there are many more. Jamestown seems to have skill in regard to this sort of iconic location in public view.

In September 2017, Jamestown unveiled plans as to how the now vacant space would be used, and renovation work has been progressing on One Times Square since May 2022, with Jamestown LP putting $500 million into the project. They announced in January 2019 that they planned to renovate the building and lease out the upper floors, which at the time were completely blocked by billboards. These have been removed, and so has the old white marble cladding. The completely new façade will be a dark oversized grid of black steel columns and beams and new floor-to-ceiling glass forming a curtain wall.

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This is a close view, then a further one, of the southwest corner of the structure, at 7th & 42nd. Returning from an errand, I changed from the 42nd Street bus to the 7th Avenue bus here a couple of weeks ago and saw this live. The billboards are gone, and the new façade presenting a grid of black steel columns with a glass backdrop is developing.

They're doing a new configuration of LED displays, but mainly limited to the northern side, facing the Square, since the present billboards have started to become dated.

Jamestown will open much of the building's interior to the public for the first time in decades. The interior will include a museum on six floors that will tell the story of the building, how it fits into the history of Times Square, and how the Ball Drop came about. The 18th floor will have an outdoor wrap-around viewing deck with a glass railing and also a cantilevered walkway. This has also been referred to as an "observatory". The deck will be accessed by a pair of glass elevators attached to the eastern (Broadway) side of the structure. It will offer an elevated view of Times Square—in the opposite direction (and higher) than the bleachers at the north end--and a closer look at the ball of the Ball Drop. There will also be a new outside glass elevator to the observation deck and the deck would be open year-round.
[From the announced height of the deck I now believe that the height of the lower level of the building is 18 stories--this is the northern part built over the former tenement buildings. The upper level of the building, the part that replaced the larger Pabst Hotel to the south and which has the Ball Drop on its roof, is reported as 25 stories online but as 26 by Jamestown.

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This is an artist's image provided by Jamestown looking south at where there will still be LED billboards on the Times Square side. Click to note the deck, and the outside glass elevator going up to it. Also note the Ball, and how close the deck is to it.

The ground level would be renovated to provide an expanded entrance to the Times Square–42nd Street subway station and will include ground-floor retail space with a new tenant yet to be announced. There would be only one story of office space, and technology companies would be able to lease 12 stories for interactive attractions. The anticipated completion of the renovation will be in the summer of 2024.

Here are two photos of interest:

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The first link shows on a corner of the building how even the white marble cladding was disrespected back in the day in order to get more signs up. The bars in the upper part of the picture form the framework that was put up to hold signs. The metal railings curving around the corner below that once held the famous news zipper that went around all four sides. This would have been the replacement for the original one on the Times Tower.
The second link also shows the signs having been removed as well as some of the marble cladding. That allows us to see the original steel beams of the 1904 Times Tower temporarily exposed. Thus we're looking thru the sarcophagus to the original skeleton of the building that we saw in those 1904 construction photos.

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These last three links, all artists conceptions provided by Jamestown, are the most spectacular.
The first is an aerial view, showing the two layers of the observation deck in detail, and how close it is to the upper roof with the Ball (not shown). The outside elevator to the deck rises from the main entrance on pedestrianized Broadway. That's 42nd on the left, and 43rd crossing 7th on the right.
The second link looks upward at the two levels of the deck, and the elevator.
The third link has us standing at 42nd (left) and Broadway (right), looking at the new subway entrance on the Broadway façade. We see the elevator, and the return of a modernized zipper newsfeed, less essential today than it was in 1928, but fun to have back. To this last view we really must compare our first view of this very same corner, in 1898, before the New York Times changed this and the whole area to what eventually became Midtown.

Pre-Ball Drop    For our last look at Times Square, we'll take a look at its most famous event, the New Year's Eve Ball Drop. I thought I knew pretty much about it, but have found out a lot more.
Do realize that it has to be the most successful advertising stunt ever. The purpose of the stunt was to announce that the New York Times had left Park Row/Newspaper Row and was moving into its new home, "way uptown" in what is now merely Midtown, with the building located on a square named after it. The paper was also pleased that the new subway had a station right beneath its building that could bring New Yorkers north out of the built-up area, but also south down from what would be turning into the Upper West Side.

The celebration of course depended on when the new Times Tower would be finished. As we saw above, it was coming along well enough in early November 1904 so that searchlights on its roof could announce the results of the presidential election. It's a reasonable guess that by December, things were coming along quite well that some departments might even have started moving in—but that's just a logical guess. Still, the newspaper decided that they'd wait a bit and make the official move-in date of the Times to be 1 January 1905. That would allow the move-in celebration to coincide with the New Year's Eve celebration the night before. THAT'S how it all started.

To indicate that they were celebrating more than just the new year, on 31 December 1904, the Times staged a day-long street fair, unusual if you're just waiting for the change at midnight. Finally, when midnight came, they DID celebrate the New Year from up on the roof, with—what else?--fireworks!. The entire day was very popular and did attract 200,000 revelers away from Trinity Church, the long-time favorite site to ring in the New Year, and thus started the tradition of doing so in Times Square. Again, this was the year 1904.

A good celebration—even as a moving-in publicity stunt--is worth repeating, so on New Year's Eve in 1905 and 1906, there were two more fireworks displays above the Times Tower. The ongoing publicity stunt was working out well, and people were enjoying celebrating in the new location. But then in 1907 NYC banned fireworks displays above people's heads as dangerous. So what was the Times to do then?

I want to make one additional point before continuing. As I see it, the celebration was all based on the Times Tower's completion so the newspaper could move in. Here's some speculation. What if the building had been completed in the summer, say earlier in 1904, or if it had been delayed to the summer of 1905? The Times would still have wanted to have a moving-in party, but might they have chosen instead the Fourth of July to blend their celebration with? The weather's warmer then, and fireworks are traditional at that time. Again, this is just a "what if" type of speculation, but I believe now that the celebration was not necessarily wedded to New Year's Eve, but just happened to conveniently fall then. And it remains there to this day.

Time Balls    We live on the Water Planet (tho we presumptuously call it Earth), and navigators on ships at sea historically needed to use their sextants and octants to measure precisely where they were. To get their north or south latitude between 0° at the equator and 90° at each pole, they sighted the north or south pole star. The height of the pole star in degrees above the horizon yields the latitude of the observer, within a degree or so.

But to get their east-west longitude, it was historically much more difficult. They had to compare local time with time at the prime meridian (0°) at Greenwich. Only in the late 18C were reliable marine chronometers available, and they didn't become more affordable until the 19C. But how do you check local time, or even check that your chronometer is still accurate—or set right? Eventually, they were able to use time signals transmitted by telegraph or radio, and today they use GPS. But what recourse could they have in, say, the mid-19C? Time balls.

A time ball is a time-signaling device on top of a building. It consists of a large, painted wooden or metal ball on a flagpole that is lowered, flag-like, at a predetermined time to enable navigators aboard ships offshore to verify the setting of their marine chronometers. Time balls were usually dropped at 1 PM, but in the US, they were always dropped at noon, which is the basis we'll use here.

Note the three-step methodology, which I find important. (1) About five minutes before noon, to alert nearby ships, the ball was raised from the bottom halfway up the pole. (2) At about 2-3 minutes before noon, it was raised all the way to the top. (3) Then, when the ball began its drop, it was the exact hour (noon, or 1 PM), and the time was noted on the ships. I find this "ready-set-go" way to do it to be very logical and sensible. More later.

Of course whatever "time-ball buildings" that remain today are just historic sites, and perhaps museums. But we should look at a few of them. Where else to start but at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich itself, whose red time ball has been around since 1833 so ships on the Thames could set their chronometers (Photo by ChrisO). This is the time-ball tower in Cape Town (Photo by Dicklyon). The Sydney Observatory still has a time ball (Photo by Dicklyon). And this charming little building is the Time Ball Tower Museum (click) in the town of Deal, right on the English Channel, just north of Dover (Photo by nick macneill).

As it turns out, there was a time ball in Manhattan, not on the water, but high enough to be seen from the waters around Manhattan, as well as from the land, for those who might have been interested. This was the second iteration (after a fire) of the Western Union Telegraph Building on Broadway at Dey (say "Dye") Street in Lower Manhattan. This building definitely had a time ball. I would say that that's apparently the time ball toward the left on the roof, tho the caption does not specifically identify it as such.

Beginning in 1877, a time ball was dropped from the top of the building at exactly noon, triggered by a telegraph from the National Observatory in Washington. The time-ball system was used as the initial reference for standard railway time starting in 1883, which eventually resulted in time zones being set up. In any case, the time ball on top of this building was the direct inspiration for the Ball Drop on Times Square.

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For some time, I wondered how something downtown affected Times Square, then it struck me—just look at this map again of the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge area we used in the last posting. The time ball was at the lower left, at Dey and Broadway, northwest corner. The earlier home of the New York Times (now part of Pace University) was at 41 Park Row, which is that entire block between Spruce and Beekman, backing up to Nassau. The paper had moved to Times Square only three years earlier, and there should be no surprise that it was aware of this time ball. Perhaps the ball had even helped the Times keep time on Park Row, but that's again speculation.

Ball Drop    So in 1907, with fireworks now out of the question, the Times instead arranged to have the first Ball Drop from its roof. (Tho the centennial of celebrating New Years in Times Square fell in 2004, I don't recall any special point being made then, but 2007 was pointed out as being the centennial of the Ball Drop.) The Times arranged it all in-house. It had an electrician already in its employ to fashion a ball out of iron and wood. It weighed 700 lbs (318 kg) and was 5 ft (1.5 m) in diameter. Inside were 100 incandescent light bulbs, each one putting out a mere 25 watts!!! At midnight, the electrician lowered the ball from a roof flagpole to a sign at the base welcoming the New Year, 1908.

Changes came over the years.
In 1920 the ball was replaced by a 400-lb (181 kg) iron ball.
Radio, which had progressed since the 1921 prizefight, first covered the Ball Drop in 1929.
In the war years of 1942 and 1943, no Ball Drop took place in observance of wartime blackouts. In those two years, crowds observed a minute of silence ending at midnight, followed by a recording of pealing bells.
TV coverage started in 1943. With no Ball Drop, there must have been a lot less to show.
In 1955, the ball was replaced with a 150-lb (68 kg) aluminum ball with 180 light bulbs.
From 1981 to 1988, the ball was rigged with red lights and a green stem to signify the Big Apple.
In 1995, the ball was upgraded with rhinestones, strobe lights, and computer controls.
For the 2000 Millennium, the ball was redesigned by Waterford Crystal of Ireland. It was made of aluminum and featured an outer surface of 504 triangular Waterford Crystal panels, as well as 423 light bulbs by Phillips of the Netherlands.
For the 2007 Centennial of the Ball Drop, it was further upgraded with LEDs by Phillips, completely replacing all bulbs, which were sold off, with the proceeds going to charity.
The current Ball, the fifth, is 12 ft (3.7 m) in diameter, weighs six tons, and uses over 32,000 LED lamps (Photo by Susan Serra).
Today the celebration is organized by Jamestown One Times Square, which owns both the building and the ball. Waterford and Phillips are principals among the sponsors, and the event has the support of the City of New York. It's broadcast to 120 million TV viewers in the US and a billion worldwide via 275 broadcasters.

Smoke & Mirrors    I'm all for the Ball Drop celebration, but I have to point out that it isn't what it appears to be—it's all smoke & mirrors--which is why I'd like to see what happens at midnight changed, as described above. How genuine do you think this view is (Photo by Mariordo )? Just what are we seeing? We see the top of the pole, and the ball is at the bottom where the year sign is located, right? Wrong. Picture Toto pulling the curtain away to reveal that the Wizard of Oz is not at all what he seems to be.

We're only seeing the upper half of the pole, and the Ball is at its middle. The bottom half of the pole is hidden behind the billboard--that's why it's there—so we NEVER see the bottom of the pole. The billboard is there for two reasons (beyond making money): to support the year sign, which rests on its top to further the illusion, but also to hide the fact that the crowd is not seeing the bottom of the pole. As the ceremony plays out, the Ball does NOT drop from the top to the bottom of the pole as we're led to believe. It drops from the top to the middle and stops, then the year sign gets lit. It's great fun, but fake—all smoke and mirrors.

Some clever photographer, not at New Year's and in the daytime, gained access to some building on the side and shot this revealing view looking down 42nd Street. This was taken before the signage was removed from the wide part of the building. There is also this closer view (Both Photos by Priwo). Click on each to see that the ball, when "at the bottom, lighting up the sign", is really in the middle, and not touching or all that near the year sign.

I can only speculate why they fool the public this way, but it does seem to be the logical answer. Look at the angle of view in both photos. The lower half of the pole and its storied "year-revealing bottom" can't be seen from Times Square because of the steep angle of the lower and upper roof levels of the building. This has to explain the fantasy of the middle being called the "bottom"--and the year sign is also not at any "bottom". Now go back to the view from below and see how well the whole thing is faked.

Now look one last time at my suggestion. (1) The lit Ball starts out at the bottom, visually blocked from view; at 11:55 it rises half-way (which is really the ¾ point) and waits; (2) at 11:58 it slowly moves to the top with a ten-second countdown ending the old year; (3) At midnight, when the ball STARTS its descent, is the New Year, and the year sign turns on, not waiting for the Ball to reach any "bottom". The Ball would stop where it currently does, but no one is fooled by a bottom, since the top is the defining moment.

This next video is too long at 6:58, so skim it. It shows the 2023 Ball Drop test to confirm that all is well. The workers are standing at the otherwise unseen "bottom" and behind the billboard, raising it up midway to the "false bottom" and also to the top. It's really fun to see the LEDs flashing up close. At 1:30, the Ball is behind the sign and wouldn't be able to be seen yet from below. Note the "tail" of electrical cables that follows the ball on the unseen side.

And then it's New Year's Eve in Times Square. The billboard at the top that hides the lower pole has advertised Toshiba, Volkswagen, Capital One, and this year it was Kia, with its hard-to-read logo:

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Kia seems to have also added an analog clock face, as well as a digital readout counting down the entire last minute before midnight (see video), which is a nice touch. This is the 2023 Ball Drop (4:54).
In case you missed it, go back first to look at the people at 0:43, then jump to 1:38 for one answer to the "loving couples" question posed earlier. Times do change, and in Times Square to boot, where the original picture was shot. At 3:57 is a corresponding version.
Starting at 1:08, Auld Lang Syne is barely heard because of all the cheering. They use the intro to Guy Lombardo's 1947 Decca Records version immediately following the Ball Drop. This is the only still-active remnant left of the Lombardo era. We heard a wisp of it, and we'll talk more about the song itself in the next posting. After that, these recordings usually follow: the Theme from New York, New York (Frank Sinatra), heard at 2:10 much more clearly; America the Beautiful (Ray Charles); What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong); Over the Rainbow (not by Judy Garland, but by the late Hawaiian singer, Israel Kamakawiwoʻole).

Entertainment    We have gotten used to the fact that there's musical entertainment connected with the New Year's celebration in Times Square, but I'm convinced we have to think of the Ball Drop and any entertainment to be two separate events that started out taking place at the same time and that today take place in the same location—more or less. From the facts I see, we have to divide the issue of entertainment into three periods.

The first period would run from the start in 1907 into the early Twenties. I've seen no indication anywhere that the New York Times early on provided any entertainment for the crowds waiting hours for the Ball Drop. This doesn't mean they didn't—you'll recall that for the presidential election in 1904, with light beams shining above, there was a noted band of the day playing at the foot of the building for those who wanted to physically read the posted election results. But whatever we picture for this earliest period, we have no reason to think that musical entertainment overwhelmed the Ball Drop as it does today.

The second period started in the Twenties and moved heavily into the Thirties and Forties, when two developments coincided: the popularity of Big Bands along with the spread of nationwide radio broadcasting beyond the early stages that we discussed earlier. The combination was referred to as Big Band Remote.

While today one often thinks of music, even popular music, often performed in large venues such as arenas, in the Thirties and Forties, Big Band music was largely associated with big city hotel ballrooms, altho restaurants and clubs were also used. To fill radio time, major radio networks would send a two-man team, a technician and an announcer, to the venue, and a remote coast-to-coast live broadcast was the result. During WWII, the remote locations even expanded to military bases and defense plants. The venues were mostly located in major cities, such as Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Chicago, to add to the sophisticated urban feel. As early as 1923, listeners could tune in to the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra in New York, for many years conducted by Xavier Cugat. Chicago's Edgewater Beach Hotel started broadcasting in 1924; the Aragon Ballroom started in Chicago in 1926. The Chicago broadcasts featured bands headed by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and many others. Boston's Ritz Carlton featured Artie Shaw.

In 1924, Guy Lombardo, a Canadian-American from London, Ontario, formed his band, the Royal Canadians, which was billed as creating "the sweetest music this side of Heaven".

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Broadcasting was always a factor in the Big Band Remote era. The first link is to an undated photo showing a CBS microphone. The second is in 1950, showing an NBC microphone. Lombardo's orchestra first broadcast nationally from Chicago in 1927. They then played at the Roosevelt Grill in the Roosevelt Hotel (here in 1954) in New York City for three decades, from 1929 to 1959. When the Grill closed, they performed 1959 until 1976 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, in its Grand Ballroom, and also live on radio from its Starlight Roof.

In 1929 they also did radio's first nationwide New Year's Eve broadcast, and as mentioned, the same year saw radio's first covering the Ball Drop. It has to be presumed that the two events were blended together as a single radio broadcast, since you can't watch a Ball Drop on the radio, so that that must have been secondary to the music. Starting in 1956, the New Year’s Eve broadcasts were televised, but again it was mostly music from a hotel ballroom, with periodic remote reports from Times Square, including the Ball Drop at the end. Yet these radio and TV broadcasts played a large part of New Year's Eve celebrations across North America, to the point where Guy Lombardo was called Mr New Year's Eve. Guy Lombardo hosted 48 straight New Year's Eve broadcasts on CBS radio until his death in 1977, and on CBS Television for the two final decades, which also featured coverage of the Ball Drop in Times Square. But even on TV, that remote coverage was secondary to the music program. Lombardo was also well known for his band's performance of Auld Lang Syne at midnight, which helped make the Scottish folk song synonymous with the New Year's holiday all across North America.

After Guy Lombardo's death in 1977, others took over the Royal Canadians, and as of 1980, the name was franchised out to various band leaders. I clearly remember at least one year when the orchestra performed not from a hotel but instead from Grand Central Station. Even after his death, the band's New Year's specials continued for two more years on CBS before the present music program came into prominence.

I remember that several times in the late Sixties, Guy Lombardo appeared in cameos on the comedy show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Once, in a quick, head-only blackout appearance in the joke wall, he said "When I go, I'm taking New Year's Eve with me!" I remember laughing, but never thought he meant it.

We can illustrate via YouTube videos what the Lombardo era looked like on TV. This is Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1976, as it became 1977, his 48th and final consecutive New Year's broadcast (it runs 7:33, so skim it). At 3:00 note the split screen at midnight, when Lombardo puts on a funny hat and leads the ten-second countdown, after which they start playing Auld Lang Syne. If you want to hear more of the music that was played very same evening, skim this longer video (14:12). It includes six of the songs they played that evening. You might want to zone in at 13:00, where they appropriately perform "Give my Regards to Broadway". Inexplicably, at 13:22 they show the smoke rings billboard, updated with an amazingly hip dude. However, it's not for Camel cigarettes, but for Gordon's Gin, which seems to bubble away nearby. And it's all where Bond's waterfall used to be! The only constant is change.

The third period of entertainment is the one we're still in, and was initiated by Dick Clark. He was an American television and radio personality known for hosting American Bandstand from 1956 to 1989, a TV program which spectacularly popularized Rock 'n' Roll music to young people and their parents. In the 1970s, Clark felt that Guy Lombardo's New Year's specials were outdated and did not appeal well to younger viewers. He believed that only older viewers would be interested in big band music accompanied by people dancing on a dance floor in tuxedos and ball gowns wearing funny paper party hats. So Clark decided to produce a more youthful New Year's Eve special of his own to compete. He called his TV music program New Year's Rockin' Eve, a name chosen to immediately jolt the viewer to expect a new and different approach to the more formal atmosphere of Guy Lombardo's special.

Clark's first TV program on New Year's Eve was in 1972 for NBC, which also included supplementary coverage of the Ball Drop. It aimed to challenge Lombardo's program on CBS. After two years, the program moved to ABC and Clark assumed hosting duties himself. Following Lombardo's death in 1977, Rockin' Eve experienced a surge in popularity. Following Clark's stroke in 2004, the program was gradually turned over to Ryan Seacrest, who took full control after Clark's death in 2012. Since 2008, the program has been billed as Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest. It has consistently remained the highest-rated New Year's Eve special broadcast by the major television networks in the US.

I do believe that these music programs have always overwhelmed the Ball Drop. The public seems to think they're tuning in on the Ball Drop, but both Lombardo and Clark/Seacrest have presented their styles of music, occasionally taking a look at people waiting in Times Square, and finally watching the Ball Drop. While to my knowledge, Lombardo was always in a hotel ballroom and never appeared personally at the Ball Drop, the Clark/Seacrest program seems to actually take place in Times Square—primarily. They do set up, rather impractically, some sort of bandstand/stage out in the winter cold where some musical performances do take place. But the majority of performances, particularly of headliners, are not only recorded at some time in advance, they mostly emanate from Hollywood! That further denigrates this music program as being less of a New York event.

Even in the Lombardo years, I never watched the whole musical program, just tuning in here and there, and finally for the Ball Drop. But now, especially that I'm not a fan of pop music anyway, there's even less reason for me to watch other than in bits and pieces. I'll say it one more time: contrary to popular belief, what is shown on TV is only secondarily "the Ball Drop at Times Square". When broadcast, it's always been a music show primarily, with a remote to the Ball.

On to Central Park    Let's recap. We wanted to illustrate that Manhattan had, for several years at the turn of the 20C (and before it was electrified), an island-wide, extensive urban street cable car system similar to San Francisco's, that ran up Broadway, with two branches. Confirm that by clicking again on our map:

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We've used the narrative device of making believe we've been riding that Broadway cable car line from its start at the Battery, up Lower Broadway to City Hall Park, thence to Union Square, Madison Square (where the East Side branch took off at 23rd and up Lex), Herald Square, Times Square, then ending at Central Park.
The HSq/TSq map we used in the past doesn't reach far enough, so instead we can move to this local "gray map", showing the area from Times Square up to Central Park (click as needed):

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We're at One Times Square and are about to go north. We can confirm that the area ultra-hyped as the Crossroads of the World is really not a crossroads at all anymore, other than figuratively. What had been the Native American Wickquasgeck Trail, later became in this section Bloomingdale Road, then Broadway, was crossed by 7th Avenue when the Manhattan grid was laid out. At that point the two avenues did form a long, narrow crossroads—hence the name--and we saw early 20C photos of both vehicular and streetcar traffic actually laboriously intersecting at this point. Then we saw the barrier built down the middle ending the physical crossroads. On the west side of the square, Broadway & 7th became one street for purposes of traffic movement, and the same thing happened on the east side. It's like an X split left and right.

Nor is there any history of a rail crossroads here. When the IRT arrived down 42nd Street, it turned up 7th Avenue for 2-3 blocks before easing north under Broadway (later the 7th Avenue connection was extended south). And when the BMT arrived north up Broadway, it had no choice but to then stay on the east side and go up 7th. And if you refer back to the cable car route map, you can see that it did the same thing as the BMT would do years later. Find the brown line north of 42nd and note how the Broadway line leaves Broadway at Times Square to run up 7th Avenue up to the Park.

You'll also note that at 53rd, the Upper West Side branch turns west for two blocks, from 7th to 9th, then turns north (no change necessary—all three lines had thru service). But this is the area where all numbered avenues had their names changed at one point north of 59th, so 9th Avenue becomes Columbus Avenue. You'll also note that, from the moment this branch turned off, it ran under the 6th Avenue elevated line (in gold) to the last cable car stop.

Now return to the gray map. As we roll up 7th, we pass behind the Winter Garden Theater. At 55th, the branch line takes off (not shown) and at 57th, we stop beside Carnegie Hall. It opened in 1891, and I find it pleasant to know that Carnegie Hall had cable car service starting a few years after it opened. We are almost at Central Park, but let's move back to the route map.

Tho the park starts at 59th, you'll note that our cable car—and the adjacent branch of the 6th Avenue el—each have their stops at 58th. Yet my guess is they were possibly located mid-block toward 59th. We should now move to this map showing a lot more of the neighborhood around the southern end of Central Park:

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It's easy to see here that the two avenues bringing the cable car and the el to the park both have convenient pedestrian entrances into the park. While some might wonder that this seems to be a dead end, it has to be realized that in this pre-automobile time period, it was very normal for rail lines like these to lead to amusement parks, cemeteries, parks, beaches, and other locations on the outskirts of built-up areas. I've seen them in other cities as well, since it was the only way for most people to reach these areas. I also think of the Woodlawn elevated line in the Bronx ending at Woodlawn Cemetery. You'll recall that in Chicago, some streetcars once even had funeral cars (2022/7).

To get the time frame accurate, 59th Street originally used that name from river to river, but for the three blocks bordering the park from 5th to 8th Avenues, 59th Street is now called Central Park South. However, that name change took place in 1896, roughly in our time frame, so still calling this stretch 59th Street is not inaccurate, as it was in the midst of change.

Take one last look at this map and imagine how well the area, as well as all of Manhattan, was served by cable cars back in the day, on Broadway/7th, on Columbus, and on Lexington (between Park & 3rd). If all these lines still existed, my friends living on both the Upper West and Upper East Sides could come and visit me downtown by taking a one-seat cable-car ride, getting off at the Rector Street stop on Broadway, facing Wall Street.