Manhattan Nights
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John J. Fitzgerald, a reporter for the Morning Telegraph, used the term, Big Apple, during the 1920's in his newspaper column Around the Big Apple. The term apple was used by stable hands in New Orleans when referring to horse racing and racetracks. Fitzgerald may have picked up the term from jockeys and trainers in New Orleans who aspired to race on the Big Apple, meaning a New York City racetrack. In 1997 the corner of 54th & Broadway, where Fitzgerald lived for 30 years, was renamed Big Apple Corner.
9th and 10th Avenue—New York City
In 1808, John Randall, Jr. laid out the plans for New York City's street system. He designed a gridiron system of north-south avenues crossed at right angles by east-west streets. His gridiron spanned the area of east Houston Street to 155th Street. This system is still in use today.
On May 14, 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke ground for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts became a reality in September, 1962 when the first of its performing spaces, Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall), was inaugurated with a concert of music by Vaughan Williams and Mahler (among others) played by the New York Philharmonic conducted by its Music Director of the time, Leonard Bernstein.
The sodium vapor street lights on the west side of Manhattan, which burn with a yellow light, create a ghostly, surreal cityscape.
Sunday Night In Times Square—New York City
Until 1904, when the New York Times moved to 43rd street just off Broadway, the area was known as Longacre Square. Longacre Square in New York City and London was originally the carriage trade center where carriages were built and repaired. The New Year’s Eve tradition of lowering a lighted ball in Times Square was started by the newspaper. The first ball descended from a flag pole in 1907. Made of iron and wood, with one hundred 25 watt light bulbs, it was dropped one second after midnight.
Broadway, which passes through Times Square, became known as the great white way when theaters began to use electrically lit signs to advertise what was playing. The first electric billboard appeared in Times Square in 1917 when a mechanically animated sign advertised Wrigley's Spearmint gum using 17,500 electric bulbs. The sign was a gum pack, eight stories tall and two hundred feet long. Today, zoning requires buildings in Times Square be covered with billboards, and each billboard be 11/2 times brighter than a typical lighted billboard.
Broadway and Off-Broadway refers to the number of seats in the theater, not the theater's location. Broadway theaters must have 500 or more seats. Off-Broadway theaters must have 100 to 499 seats, and Off-Off-Broadway theaters have 99 seats or less. Schubert Alley connects 44th and 45th streets between 8th Avenue and Broadway. Schubert alley is home to the famous Schubert Theater, site of the long running play "A Chorus Line"
Lined up on 59th street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, horse-drawn carriages wait to take patrons though Central Park at almost any time of the day.
One Stop Shopping—Upper West Side
Broadway in the upper 70's. Broadway, originating from Lower Manhattan at Bowling Green and ending in Albany, is one of the world's longest streets at 150 mlesi (241 km). The official name of this street is Highway 9.
72nd Street Subway—New York City
468 subway stations service 4.5 million riders on an average weekday, which means approximately 1.4 billion riders per year.Twenty-six routes carry riders over 660 miles of track each day. How much electrical power is required? Enough to light the city of Buffalo, New York for an entire year. Looking closely at the photograph, a vertical beam of blue light is in the background-”Tribute in Light” (Photograph taken September 11, 2004.)
The first electric marquee appeared on Broadway in 1891 at a theater on Madison Square at Broadway and 23rd Street. The famous Flatiron Building now occupies the site. By midway through the following decade, the street blazed with electric signs as each theater announced its shows and stars in white lights. With the advent of a subway system, several lines converging at 42nd Street and Broadway, Times Square became the obvious choice for a new theater district. There were so many theaters with bright white lights, it became known as the “Great White Way”!
The Plaza—Set Back From 5th Avenue
The Plaza Hotel closed in 2005 to be converted into condominiums.
In 1917, the first electric billboard arrived in Times Square. The mechanically animated sign advertised Wrigley's Spearmint gum using 17,500 lights. The sign was a gum pack, eight stories tall and two hundred feet long. It is estimated there are now 250 major billboards or signs in Times Square, some costing advertisers $2.5 million dollars a year in rental space. New York City requires the signs in Times Square to be at least one and a half times brighter than a typical lighted billboard, many in Times Square are much brighter.
City Life—Columbus Circle, New York City
New York City’s famous street, Broadway, is associated with live theater and Times Square, but Broadway is also one of the world’s longest streets. It originates in Lower Manhattan at Bowling Green and ends in Albany, New York, a distance of 150 miles. Broadway’s original name was the Wiechquaekeck Trail, an Algonquin Native American trade route.
John Jay College—New York City
The school is named for Justice John Jay, who was the first chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, and one of the founding fathers of the United States. Jay was a New York City native who also served as the first chief justice of the New York Supreme Court.
Shops at Columbus Circle, a four story mall in the Time Warner Center, features a 150 foot high glass wall, on which and through which, the hustle and bustle of Manhattan is seen. The Time Warner Center includes a luxury hotel, 198 luxury condominiums, upscale shopping mall, expensive restaurants, a concert hall, CNN studios, and a large Whole Foods Market in the basement. The entire structure, covering half of Columbus Circle, is designed to allow cell phones to work anywhere in the building—including elevators.
Located at the intersection of Broadway, Central Park West, Central Park South (59th Street), and Eighth Avenue, Columbus Circle was completed in 1905. The designer of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, intended for this to the main entrance, and this would create a grand entryway for what was to be one of the largest city parks in the world. The circle itself was designed by William Eno, who was known for devising ways to make travel safer, even in the days when cars were few in New York City.
John Hertz, who founded the Yellow Cab Company in 1907, chose yellow because he had read a study conducted by the University of Chicago that indicated it was the easiest color to spot. Today 12, 480 taxicabs, driven by about 40,000 licensed drivers, serve about 240 million passengers a year.
911 Memorial Lights—New York City
Cruise ships, including the Queen Mary II, regularly embark and debark passengers from Piers 88, 90, and 92 at the New York City Passenger Ship Terminal on the West Side of Manhattan.
Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle in New York City.
Columbus Circle, Manhattan
Night View—Empire State Building
On July 28, 1945 an Army Air Corps B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building at the 79th floor level.