From Angelo Rizzuto, in 1959, a view of 42nd Street looking east. On the left, Grand Central Terminal, the Commodore Hotel, and the Chrysler Building. On the right, the Pershing Square Building, the Bowery Savings Bank midtown branch, the Chanin Building, the Socony-Mobil Building mostly hidden behind Chanin, and the white stripes of the Daily News Building off in the distance.
The viaduct that carries Park Avenue around Grand Central has a series of right-angle turns that should discourage speeding more than they do, and “Pershing Square” is the combination of the T intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street and the bridge that carries a portion of the avenue up to the viaduct. New York has a bunch of “squares” that are not remotely square and Pershing Square is perhaps the geometrically oddest of them all.
One downside to knowing something about the history of construction in New York is that I have to occasionally remind myself that this streetscape does not look quite so normal to people who aren’t used to it, and that was probably more true 65 years ago.
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