Historic buildings were no less extreme. The old New York Times Building at One Times Square can be better placed in history by its signage than its form or façade: one of the earliest illuminated signs in Times Square was its news ticker, the ‘zipper,’ installed in 1928 near the base of its 25-story building, and to announce Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s victory in the 1936 presidential election, a two-story billboard of his face was installed. With sign designer Douglas Leigh’s purchase of the Times building in the 1960s, the façade took on a new prominence, for he mounted over a dozen billboard panels to the exterior, and used them as a testing ground for new signs, including the famed smoking Camel sign and later, the steaming Cup O’ Noodles sign. As the building changed hands over the next half century, billboards were added and replaced, though the zipper remained, a minimal nod to preservation. When Lehman Brothers bought the tower in 1996, they ran a cost analysis and concluded that more money could be made through wrapping the building in billboards than by renovating and leasing the relatively small office space on each floor. The building has been vacant ever since, save the bottom three floors, which currently house a Walgreen’s, as though the drugstore’s presence is an advertisement for the brand’s convenience and ubiquity. The influx of capital that drives Times Square today has produced accusations of ‘Disneyfication’ of an increasingly corporate urban space. Architects may deride its tasteless corporatisation and New Yorkers might pointedly avoid the tourist-heavy mobs, but the ongoing transformation of Times Square reveals a unique urban typology inextricably tied to the signs that obscure the buildings behind them.
To execute this manoeuvring act, the City Planning Commission consulted Robert A M Stern and graphic designer Tibor Kalman, whose ‘42nd Street Now!’ proposal oversaw the continued incorporation of signage in the subsequent development of Times Square. The 1987 Zoning Resolution fostered high- volume commercial and entertainment space in Times Square, and mandated the installation and upkeep of huge signs on the buildings’ facades and roofs. This paradoxical gesture of preservation marks a disparity between Times Square’s architectural legacy and its cultural legacy. Unlike other historically relevant neighbourhoods of New York, the architectural motifs were not deemed the most critical element of the district’s identity. Instead, it was the signs, which cover even those buildings landmarked for preservation. Signage regulations in most districts in New York City set a maximum area, height, or percent coverage for exterior signs, but Times Square follows the reverse condition: each building must exceed a robust minimum area of illuminated sign coverage, essentially ensuring that each building along the ‘bowtie’ has a 75-foot tall base of continuous signage. Many buildings erected after 1987 display unusual efforts to incorporate the signage into the façades, often exceeding the minimum requirement by as much as 50 percent. Bands of LED screens on Gwathmey Siegel’s 1585 Broadway alternate with horizontal windows, providing unobstructed views from inside the building. The drum-shaped corner of Fox & Fowle’s Four Times Square maintains views by wrapping a rounded screen about the facade and punching out the windows, leaving black squares scattered across the moving words on the facade. The subway stations too are brightly advertised. In lieu of the recognisable green bulbs at the entrance, glittering lights spell out ‘subway’ above glowing medallions that mark the train lines that access the station. Even the pavement has writing on it, bronze plaques that map the theatres of Times Square in an abstracted plan of the district.
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