Times Squared #2: Crossroads of Desire
Times Square Alliance is the business improvement district which has guided the reintroduction of Times Square as a family-friendly tourist destination. Recently, it commemorated the whole, sweeping, hundred-year Times Square story with a major gallery exhibit at the AXA Gallery on 51st Street.
Crossroads of Desire was the name of the show, which closed recently after a three-month run. I don’t know who named this alternate take on “crossroads of the world,” but it aptly acknowledges that Times Square always belonged chiefly to the night. Crossroads of Desire could also be named as a subtle tribute to a certain Broadway play in which Marlon Brando gave an emotionally raw performance. The influential 1947 production of A Streetcar Named Desire marked the approximate end to the era when Broadway would contain nearly all the staged entertainment that New York had to offer.
In its first half-century, Times Square knew the best and worst of economic times, but through it all Broadway was where everything took place—whether it was vaudeville, burlesque, musicals, melodrama, serious theater, or movies (Lowe’s on Broadway was the nation’s first movie theater). In the post-war years, important parts of the theatrical world splintered into off-Broadway and then off-off Broadway, finding homes in outside venues scattered in lower Manhattan. That’s how things still stand.
When Dianne and I ventured out to the theater last month, we didn’t go near Times Square. Instead, we went to Soho and, on another occasion, to St. Mark’s Place for sold-out, weekday evening shows in venues with about one hundred seats. Tickets were fifteen to twenty dollars, about the same as a movie with a stop at the concessions. This is affordable entertainment which can be stimulating, odd, or astounding.
I don’t think the theatrical world gains anything from this geographic separation of small theater from the hub of Broadway. Creators, performers, and theater entrepreneurs benefit from knowing each other, and more crosscurrents would occur if they lived and worked in the same neighborhood. Also, theater goers might get more easily hooked into the delights of sampling theatrical variety. Proximity is the opportunity of the compact urban place.
In Crossroads of Desire, stunning posters and artistic neon from the first half-century of Times Square gave way to porn shop artifacts and crime statistics as Times Square slid famously into urban decline. By the 1980s, each successive police report showed that assaults and batteries were an untreated epidemic in Times Square. For years, the tattered reputation of the nation’s recreation center continued to spiral downwards.
As the Crossroads of Desire displays inched closer to the 1990s, a display made from planning department survey data indicated that the community of residents and tenants displaced by redevelopment were more diverse than was widely perceived at the time. To me, this taunting evidence of a wider community within the boundaries of Times Square gnaws into my feelings that something socially dysfunctional took place in the renewal of Times Square. These were people disassociated from the perennial civic embarrassment of criminal activity but swept away along with it. Their voices were not heard in Crossroads of Desire.
Other voices I noticed to be missing from Crossroads of Desire were the politicians, developers, and planners who put into motion the redevelopment program for Times Square. During the years of urban decline, civic leaders and local property owners pondered and deliberated over the fate of Times Square. Eventually, put together the mix of urban renewal, selective historic restoration, zoning densification, and required electronic signage, that became the design for our own millennium era of Times Square.
These civic leaders belonged in a comprehensive gallery installation of the Times Square story. They spent hundreds of millions of public money to spur the private investment that followed. Instead of directing efforts to put buildings back into useful service, they moved tenants out and demolished rows of old buildings to make way for something new. The revival of Times Square was finally assured when Michael Eisner was lured in and committed large amounts of economic capital and corporate identity to the cause. After Disney was in, others came running. Today, with over 30 million visitors expected this year, Times Square is once again the happy picture of audacious signage and abundant entertainment.
Was this the inevitable strategy for success in a democratic society? More importantly, was a greater social good served through this style of redevelopment of Times Square than if a more community based approach had been tried? What if fiscal seed money had been put into housing and into special grants to nudge New York’s splintered theater community back into one single Times Square neighborhood? Who’s to know how adding another depth to the pool of creativity and entrepreneurship within Times Square might have rippled through the cultural life and economy of New York.
After spending a couple of hours absorbing the old Times Square at the Crossroads of Desire, I walked out into the new Times Square evermore mindful of how high it had flown in its heyday and how burnt out and depleted it was when it hit bottom.
I walked over to Eighth Avenue just outside the west edge of Times Square. This area was skipped over by the redevelopment of Times Square. According to a recent Times real estate piece, rents here are comparable to any local Manhattan neighborhood. It has a hotel or two where plenty of people come and go, and adult shops, bodegas, drug stores, and bars. It clearly retains some seediness.
Could a vision for incubating small theater coupled with affordable housing to help support the theater community take hold here? It’s not likely to happen. The planners at the Times Square Alliance already have a vision for Eighth Avenue. They reportedly hope that Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and the rest of the rest of the package of chain stores commonly found in the neighborhood business districts will move in next door to the crossroads of desire.
Crossroads of Desire was the name of the show, which closed recently after a three-month run. I don’t know who named this alternate take on “crossroads of the world,” but it aptly acknowledges that Times Square always belonged chiefly to the night. Crossroads of Desire could also be named as a subtle tribute to a certain Broadway play in which Marlon Brando gave an emotionally raw performance. The influential 1947 production of A Streetcar Named Desire marked the approximate end to the era when Broadway would contain nearly all the staged entertainment that New York had to offer.
In its first half-century, Times Square knew the best and worst of economic times, but through it all Broadway was where everything took place—whether it was vaudeville, burlesque, musicals, melodrama, serious theater, or movies (Lowe’s on Broadway was the nation’s first movie theater). In the post-war years, important parts of the theatrical world splintered into off-Broadway and then off-off Broadway, finding homes in outside venues scattered in lower Manhattan. That’s how things still stand.
When Dianne and I ventured out to the theater last month, we didn’t go near Times Square. Instead, we went to Soho and, on another occasion, to St. Mark’s Place for sold-out, weekday evening shows in venues with about one hundred seats. Tickets were fifteen to twenty dollars, about the same as a movie with a stop at the concessions. This is affordable entertainment which can be stimulating, odd, or astounding.
I don’t think the theatrical world gains anything from this geographic separation of small theater from the hub of Broadway. Creators, performers, and theater entrepreneurs benefit from knowing each other, and more crosscurrents would occur if they lived and worked in the same neighborhood. Also, theater goers might get more easily hooked into the delights of sampling theatrical variety. Proximity is the opportunity of the compact urban place.
In Crossroads of Desire, stunning posters and artistic neon from the first half-century of Times Square gave way to porn shop artifacts and crime statistics as Times Square slid famously into urban decline. By the 1980s, each successive police report showed that assaults and batteries were an untreated epidemic in Times Square. For years, the tattered reputation of the nation’s recreation center continued to spiral downwards.
As the Crossroads of Desire displays inched closer to the 1990s, a display made from planning department survey data indicated that the community of residents and tenants displaced by redevelopment were more diverse than was widely perceived at the time. To me, this taunting evidence of a wider community within the boundaries of Times Square gnaws into my feelings that something socially dysfunctional took place in the renewal of Times Square. These were people disassociated from the perennial civic embarrassment of criminal activity but swept away along with it. Their voices were not heard in Crossroads of Desire.
Other voices I noticed to be missing from Crossroads of Desire were the politicians, developers, and planners who put into motion the redevelopment program for Times Square. During the years of urban decline, civic leaders and local property owners pondered and deliberated over the fate of Times Square. Eventually, put together the mix of urban renewal, selective historic restoration, zoning densification, and required electronic signage, that became the design for our own millennium era of Times Square.
These civic leaders belonged in a comprehensive gallery installation of the Times Square story. They spent hundreds of millions of public money to spur the private investment that followed. Instead of directing efforts to put buildings back into useful service, they moved tenants out and demolished rows of old buildings to make way for something new. The revival of Times Square was finally assured when Michael Eisner was lured in and committed large amounts of economic capital and corporate identity to the cause. After Disney was in, others came running. Today, with over 30 million visitors expected this year, Times Square is once again the happy picture of audacious signage and abundant entertainment.
Was this the inevitable strategy for success in a democratic society? More importantly, was a greater social good served through this style of redevelopment of Times Square than if a more community based approach had been tried? What if fiscal seed money had been put into housing and into special grants to nudge New York’s splintered theater community back into one single Times Square neighborhood? Who’s to know how adding another depth to the pool of creativity and entrepreneurship within Times Square might have rippled through the cultural life and economy of New York.
After spending a couple of hours absorbing the old Times Square at the Crossroads of Desire, I walked out into the new Times Square evermore mindful of how high it had flown in its heyday and how burnt out and depleted it was when it hit bottom.
I walked over to Eighth Avenue just outside the west edge of Times Square. This area was skipped over by the redevelopment of Times Square. According to a recent Times real estate piece, rents here are comparable to any local Manhattan neighborhood. It has a hotel or two where plenty of people come and go, and adult shops, bodegas, drug stores, and bars. It clearly retains some seediness.
Could a vision for incubating small theater coupled with affordable housing to help support the theater community take hold here? It’s not likely to happen. The planners at the Times Square Alliance already have a vision for Eighth Avenue. They reportedly hope that Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and the rest of the rest of the package of chain stores commonly found in the neighborhood business districts will move in next door to the crossroads of desire.
posted by Paul Cogley at 7:18 PM
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