writing on architecture
Times Square: signs and icons
by lane rick
Our writing, like our cities, outlives us. The inherent longevity of the written word, like built form, informs our histories and relays information over centuries. But another, more temporary written language thrives in our cities in the form of advertising and way-finding signage. These written elements appear and vanish with ease, a by-product of the ongoing dialogue between a city and its citizens. The very essence of Times Square is defined by its signage, now and in the past. Gaudy billboards crowd the elongated intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue, replacing architectural facades with glowing words and images, never turned off. Since the bowtie-shaped intersection was renamed Times Square in 1904, its electric signage has defined its urban identity and growth. Unlike buildings, signs are easily replaced with newer, more outstanding ones, cultivating innovation rather than preservation, the temporary over the permanent. At a time when New York is increasingly concerned with preserving its character and urban fabric, what does preservation mean when a space’s historic identity is about the new? The very adaptability of one of New York City’s most iconic public spaces means that efforts to preserve it must wrangle with the unusual process of maintaining its most consistently capricious element: the signage. By the 1920s, Times Square was a thriving entertainment and cultural district. Its already famous aggregation of neon signs and illuminated billboards, or ‘spectaculars’, had cemented its role as the sign-mecca of the city. In part due to the influence of theatres that profited from both Times Square’s reputation and a heightened street visibility of their marquees, a 1916 zoning ordinance was passed to permit large illuminated signs in the square while restricting them in other neighbourhoods because of concerns over the vulgarity of the lights and their tasteless endorsement of commercialism – nearby Fifth Avenue businesses successfully lobbied the 1922 passage of a law that banned all projecting and illuminating signs along the entire street.
With similarly tight regulations on spectaculars appearing across much of New York, electric signs, increasingly concentrated in Times Square, were welcomed by the theatres that saw both an opportunity to out-shine neighbouring competition and to cultivate a bustling and thriving tourist attraction; they installed bigger, brighter signs in a vicious cycle of one-upmanship. To this day, constantly evolving technology accelerates the rapid obsolescence of the most interchangeable component of buildings and brands: the signs affixed to the façade. Times Square’s identity emerged precisely because of the absence of nostalgia among its theatre-managers and business owners. The freewheeling evolution of entertainment and spectacle only encountered preservationist forces after Times Square’s degeneration in the dilapidated context of 1970s New York. As economic decline and rising crime rates led to a widespread debilitation of the city, Times Square adopted a deviant subculture of hustlers and adult entertainments at street level. Above, large signs remained a strong part of its character; plastic backlit panels and movie marquees replaced older signs, new neon signs advertised sex shops and peep shows in fluorescent colours. The intersection was still illuminated into the night, but with female silhouettes and racy titles of porn flicks instead of Coca-Cola bottles and Broadway shows. However, in the 1980s, the New York City Planning Commission worked with public and private interests to rehabilitate the floundering theatre district. Through eminent domain land seizures in 1982, landmark status designation for 28 of the district’s 44 theatres in 1984, and a comprehensive re-zoning in 1986, Times Square was slated to undergo a total rehabilitation in the form of family-friendly entertainment in Broadway theatres, restaurants, and retail shops along the ground floors, funded by office towers overhead.
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above, from top: Robert Frank, New York City, 1953 Dennis Stock, James Dean, 1956 Walker Evans, Neon Signs at Night for Lucky Strike Cigarettes and The Big House, Times Square, 1930 facing page, from top: Robert Frank, Mein Kampf, Times Square, 1961. RISD Museum Vivian Maier, New York (Suspended Man, Times Square Billboard), circa 1951- 55. Stephen Bulger Gallery Alfred Eisenstadt, Times Square 1945 anon, Times Square 1980 Inge Morath/Magnum, A Llama in Times Square, 1957 anon, Times Square 1940 anon, Times Square 1943
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