NYC 1983 and 1986 original footage

Hey, I admitted it. Take it with a grain of salt.

But really the same could be said about many major cities, including San Francisco, where I work.

 

the cars and the drivers were probably doing the same things and going to the same places they do now----work, shopping, restaurants, theaters, visting friends, driving home etc

 

No, thank God ! But I saw some crazy stuff in Times Square back in the 1980s....

 

Was looking for some of the films showing at the cinema in the picture at the top.. There is F.I.S.T a great Stallone film after Rocky and this gem..

 

Not just you. I always look at stuff like this and imagine what happened to the people. I'm sure some are dead.

If you weren't impressed, I'd be interested to know how much of it you actually saw. Many tourists have a standard itinerary similar to the one below, and then think they've seen NYC.

Hotel in Times Square or the midtown area
Go to a play or 2
Central Park
Empire State Building
Maybe make it down to the World Trade Center for some ghoulish sightseeing
Then back up to midtown to eat at TGI Fridays or just grab a slice of "authentic" NYC pizza at Sbarros


There's a lot more to it than that, and it's not completely Disneyfied in the greater Times Square area, I took this shot last month on 8th Ave between 43rd and 44th. That said, people who live here generally avoid Times Square if they can.

 

Or they'll go to the Junior's in the theater district. Because who wants to go to Brooklyn.

 

Looks very familiar. I started my career in NYC in 1982. I used to walk from Penn Station to Madison Avenue and 42nd Street every day. Lots of interesting deals going down in Bryant Park on my lunch hour too. The old men sitting at the bottom of the stairs looking up the skirts of the girls sitting on the library steps. Those were the days.

 

One of the FEW places like this left in NYC.....everybody will have to decide for themselves whether that is a good or bad thing

 

Originally named "The New York Times Tower" from 1905 to 1961, at the location of 1475 Broadway (and 7th Avenue) between 42nd and 43rd Street, on the South end of Times Square New York, seen here in 1937.



1905

Today

Known today as "One Times Square," it was constructed in 1905 as the New York Times office, and is famed for being the locale of the New Year’s Eve ball drop. Beginning in 1928, it was the site for the famed “zipper” news updates. Originally, it was an Italianate 25-story tower, the second-tallest building in Manhattan, visible for miles. The transformation to its current use as only a gigantic billboard began in 1963 when Allied Chemical purchased the tower and stripped off most of the beautiful ornate exterior, replacing it with flat marble. The top floor survived as a restaurant till the 1980s. Today, a giant Walgreens sign dominates the apex. A once beautiful and dynamic piece of architecture has been reduced to nothing more than a wasteful monstrosity. Today the building actually sits empty except for a Walgreen's on the ground floor. While one of the most profitable billboards in the world, it only serves a tiny minority of our society, it's owner and advertisers. It's significant origins and distinctive beauty are lost forever.

 

Wow, I never realized there was a beautiful old building under all that crap, but it makes sense now that I think about it. Let's hope it gets restored some day. I imagine there's already been people lobbying for such a project, unsuccessfully so far.

 

The other thing that's amazing to me about that is that it must somehow be more lucrative to lease the space out for billboards than fill it with office tenants. How is that even possible??

 

I was in NYC several times from the late sixties (small child) to the late 80s (adult) and again in the late nineties and post-9/11 a couple of times. In the pre-Giuliani days it had character all right, but it was definitely not all of the good kind. It was fun to visit but I never wanted to live there, still don't, even if it weren't freakishly expensive.

I don't think Times Square was quite as violent as people imagined, but it smelled bad, like much of Manhattan back then. It-the whole island- is a whole lot cleaner now, that's for sure. But it has a certain Logan's Run atmosphere, like a sort of huge theme park run by a council consisting of Walt Disney, Ming the Merciless and Gordon Gekko.

People often accuse Southerners and Midwesterners of being a little backward and provincial. I agree with this, but I also think people from NYC who have never lived elsewhere (and by elsewhere I exclude parts of Southern California, south Florida and college towns generally, where New Yorkers often wind up in colonies) are on the average the most provincial people in the world. It's not so much actually Manhattanites, many of whom are from elsewhere, as people from the boroughs and north NJ who work in Manhattan: they just don't imagine anyone could live elsewhere or, indeed, that there exists an elsewhere anyone COULD live. It's beyond their event horizon.

New York State, on the other hand, people there are pretty much just like Midwesterners, except the scenery is better so long as snow isn't something you are too averse to. I thought long and hard about accepting a job offer from a previous employer to move to a facility in upstate New York, because I loved the place and the people. In the end I turned it down because of certain laws made in an Albany controlled by the city.

 

Yes, I was an adult then and remember what it was like. I think this is a universal question, just the date changes, because I often asked the same questions when watching 50s footage as a kid. Humans haven't changed much.

 

I've never been to Times Square, but I love architecture and I love researching vintage photography and understanding the transformation of cities, businesses and culture over the decades. So when I was looking at old photos of New York, I was interested in which buildings still stood today at their original location, (for example I believe the ornate "Paramount" building still stands across the street from The Times Building). I found the Times Building was so iconic and distinctive that I wanted to know if it was sill standing and in good condition. Since I'm not familiar with the area, when I look at vintage or contemporary photography, it's a challenge to know what I'm looking at, so I had to do some research. While it is technically there, sadly it may as well not be. I wonder if most New Yorker's even remember it, since it's been covered up for so long.

Mostly from Wikipedia:
One Times Square is considered one of the most valuable advertising locations in the world. The transformation to its current use as only a gigantic billboard began in 1963 when Allied Chemical purchased the tower and stripped off most of the beautiful ornate exterior, replacing it with flat marble. While more advertising was slowly added over the subsequent decades, in 1992, the owners of One Times Square filed for bankruptcy. In March 1995, One Times Square was sold to the financial services firm Lehman Brothers for $27.5 million. The new owners felt that it would not be cost-effective to house new tenants in the tower due to the cost of the extensive renovation required in order to make it suitable for tenants as compared to the relatively small rental revenue that its limited floor space would have brought in. Instead, they decided to market the tower as a location for advertising to capitalize on its prominent location within Times Square. The entire exterior of One Times Square above the ticker was modified to add a grid frame for mounting billboard signs. Throughout 1996, One Times Square's first electronic billboards were installed. In October, a new 55-foot video screen was introduced to the top of the tower, which would feature video advertisements and community service announcements. In December 1996, a new display known as Astrovision was introduced as a replacement for the Jumbotron at the base of the tower.

Lehman Brothers sold One Times Square in 1997 to the Jamestown Group for $117 million. Filings related to the sale revealed that the billboards on the tower had been generating a net revenue of $7 million yearly, representing a 400% profit. With growing tourism and high traffic in the Times Square area (with a yearly average of over 100 million pedestrians—alongside its prominence in media coverage of New Year's festivities, seen by a wide audience yearly), annual revenue from the signs grew to over $23 million by the year 2012—rivaling London's Piccadilly Circus as the most valuable public advertising space in the world.

In November 2008, pharmacy chain Walgreens began leasing the lower floors at a $4 million yearly rate. Walgreens also introduced a new digital sign to the building that consists of a 17,000-square-foot sign that runs diagonally up both sides of the building and contains 12 million LEDs, surpassing the nearby NASDAQ sign as the largest LED sign in Times Square.

Ironically, the company and it's distinctive building that were the inspiration for the naming of Times Square, and who started the New Years Eve tradition with the annual celebration and ball-drop, has been obliterated by gaudy advertising, and totally forgotten.


2011

 

Times Square area of the 1970's.

 

I can remember scenes like the ones in the above post. I think it was during the first time I visited NYC when I was 14, in '77. I recall thinking I was not in a safe place.

The next time I was there was June 16, 1984, the day Lou Piniella played his last game for the Yankees. I was there with four co-workers. The one who drove got drunk at the game and I ended up driving into Manhattan. I remember thinking, "Hey, I'm handling this great!" I'd never driven at those speeds with that many other cars so close to mine. I went with one friend to the Empire State Building while the other three went somewhere else. When we met up again one of them excitedly told us how he'd been robbed - we just rolled our eyes when he described being taken at Three Card Monte.

I was back that August to see Elvis Costello & The Attractions at Radio City Music Hall. Front row, far right seat. I'd bought the tickets in Vermont at a Ticketron outlet where I was the only buyer when the window opened. I've been back many times since then.

Cool video. Could someone please tell me where the last 32 years went?

 

Here's another amazing video.

 

Ahhh...those were the days....

 

Times Square, 1909

 

There is nothing new under the sun. It's just now all LED's and technology.