Winding

This 1952 photo by Angelo Rizzuto is titled “Bdwy winding all thru T-Sq.” and it definitely shows Broadway and Times Square, although I have some quibbles about “winding.”

This view is looking north and a little bit west, probably taken from a window on a high floor of 1450 Broadway, which is at 41^st Street. The somewhat gawky and ornate white building on the left is the old New York Times Building which, despite the “Times” signs on the tower, was entirely rental space since the newspaper moved out to a bigger building on 43^rd Street in the 1910s. The be-clocked wedding cake behind it is the Paramount Building, beyond that is the Hotel Astor with the curved mansard roof. This picture does a nice job of showing how low-rise Times Square was until the 1980s redevelopment. Nearly every building facing the square except for Paramount and Times has been replaced since then; Times was reskinned in the 1960s and is currently being reskinned again.

Broadway doesn’t really “wind” through Times Square. That’s Broadway at the bottom center, to the right of the Times building. Its line runs almost straight through the acute-angle intersection with Seventh Avenue up to 48^th Street where it turns a bit more north on its sort-of northwest diagonal, passing to the left of the building with the Chevrolet sign. There’s a bit of an optical illusion here: traffic on Broadway above the intersection with Seventh Avenue goes onto Seventh below the intersection, and vice versa, so the traffic lane markers bend from one avenue to the other. The centerline of Seventh is absolutely straight but it doesn’t quite look like it because of the traffic bend. In recent years, with a chunk of the Broadway roadbed being converted to pedestrian-only use, it’s easier to make out the real direction of the streets.

“Times Square” is obviously a misnomer, but no one in 1904 was going to name this weird bow-tie-shaped intersection “Times Double Triangle” or anything like that.