Manhattan Nights-Lighting The Darkness

In 1880, the first electric street lights, arc lamps, were installed on Broadway from 14th to 26th Streets. 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.

9th and 10th Avenue—New York City First Place 2012
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.
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72nd Street Subway—New York City Third Place 2018
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.)
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Always Remember
911 Memorial Lights—New York City
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Big Apple—New York City
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.
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Yellow Fog—Honorable Mention NY Center For Photographic Art 2019
The sodium vapor street lights on the west side of Manhattan, which burn with a yellow light, create a ghostly, surreal cityscape.
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Columbus Circle From Inside
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.
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The Plaza—Set Back From 5th Avenue
After two years and $12 million dollars, the 19-story Plaza Hotel opened its doors to the public on October 21, 1907. Situated at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, it was described at the greatest hotel in the world.

Originally, The Plaza was the primary residence of wealthy New Yorkers. The first to sign the register and stay at The Plaza was Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. The original nightly rate for a single room started at the outrageously expensive $2.50 per night.

In 2005, The Plaza Hotel was converted into condominiums.
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Central Park Night
Even for longtime Manhattan residents, navigating one’s way in Central Park can be tricky. It is fairly easy to get turned around and in certain parts of the park landmark buildings can be obscured.

Some New Yorkers know the nineteenth-century cast-iron lampposts in Central Park are stamped with a with a four digit code to identify the location in the park. The first two digits on the lamppost are the nearest cross street. The last two digits indicate east and west. An even number means closer to Central Park West, an odd number closer to 5th Avenue.

The last two digits increase as one moves toward the center of the park. For example, 9703 indicates a location on the West side aligned with 97th Street while 9746 indicates the East side close to the middle of the park.

This numerical system was originally designed to help park employees locate lamps in need of servicing, but it is also a subtle method used by visitors to know where they are in the park—at least those who know the secret.
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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.
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Water Stones—Second Place 2019
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.
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Rose Center—New York City
The largest suspended glass curtain wall in the United States.

The glass cube is made with 736 individual panes, nearly an acre of glass. The average size of each glass pane is 5x10.5 feet.
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Christopher Columbus At Night
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.
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Times Square—New York City Third Place 2013
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.
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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.
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Horse and Buggy—New York City
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.
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Manhattan Moon
Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle in New York City.
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Going The Same Way—Times Square New York City
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”!
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