1905 New York Times moves into new headquarters designed by architects Eidlitz and McKenzie.

1907 New Year's Eve: First ball drops from the tower, starting new tradition.

1913 New York Times outgrows its tower and moves to 229 W. 43 Street.

1928 Nov. 6: the "Zipper," an illuminated bulletin board of news headlines, is placed on Times Tower.

1961 Lighting and sign designer and entrepreneur Douglas Leigh buys the Times Tower, which becomes known as One Times Square, with a plan to turn the building into "a showcase for signs."

1963 Leigh sells the tower to Allied Chemical Corporation which hires architects Haines, Lundberg, Wahler to replace the terra cotta fa�ade with a new exterior of white marble and grey glass. Allied Chemical creates exhibits featuring displays of science, technology, and their products.

1975 Developer Alex Parker buys the Allied Chemical Tower and plans to add four floors and clad it in glass in a design by Gwathmey Siegel.

1981 Parker sells One Times Square to Swiss investors.

1983 October: Times Square Plaza, the design of four matching office towers by Philip Johnson and John Burgee for Park Tower Realty, is unveiled.

1984 March: Municipal Art Society competition for Times Tower site.

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URBAN RENEWAL AND URBAN DESIGN

The 1960s and '70s were decades of both urban crisis and planning optimism that rationalist design on a large scale could solve urban problems or defend order against assault.

In this model of a dense new office district on the axis of W. 42nd St. near Times Square, envisioned by the Regional Plan Association in 1969, the emphasis was placed on increased bulk and efficient horizontal and vertical transit and linkages. A grid of closely spaced high-rises would connect the suburban commuter world of Grand Central Terminal to the subway transit hub of Times Square. Multi-level pedestrian flows were more of a priority than the life of the street and sidewalks.

In 1973, with the support of the City, architect John Portman successfully competed to become both the designer and developer of the massive hotel, seen in the images at the right, on the full block of Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets. Like contemporary Portman projects in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Detroit, his modernist design was both monumental and inwardly oriented around a full-height atrium space. The project was announced with fanfare by Mayor Lindsay in 1973, but various obstacles, including the City's fiscal crisis, stalled progress for a decade. The hotel was completed in 1985 as the Marriott Marquis.

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WEST 42ND STREET AND THEATERS

Cover Image from the 42nd Street Development Project Design Guidelines.
Cooper, Robertson & Partners

The broad definition of the Times Square district includes the blocks of W. 42nd St. between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The concentration of theaters that lined these cross-town blocks from the early 20th century was the economic and social lifeblood of the area. By the 1970s, though, the theaters and movie palaces had moved dramatically downscale, featuring action films, porn, and peep shows. Crime was rampant and intractable: conditions seemed to defeat all attempts at urban renewal.

City at 42nd Street Massing Axonometric, 1978. Cooper, Robertson & Partners.

In 1979, the 42nd St. Redevelopment Corp. launched a new plan called "The City at 42nd Street" directed at the blocks between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and an additional block from 40th to 41st St. envisioned as a mammoth Fashion Mart. An impressive list of consultants worked on a detailed proposal funded by a $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and corporate support. The stated goal of this private initiative was "to change the character of the 42nd Street/Times Square Area, using a combination of restoration, demolition, and new construction." Returning theaters to 42nd St. was a particular focus, but other popular entertainments were proposed. Indeed, the plan seemed so like a theme park that Mayor Koch vetoed it as "Disneyfication."

One aspect of The City at 42nd Street plan was particularly important for the area's future development and survived in all subsequent plans: the cluster of high-density skyscrapers intended for the corner sites at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. These were linked to a funding strategy that would support the acquisition of the historic theaters and subway improvements.

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THEATERS AND SKYSCRAPERS

Demolition of the Helen Hayes Theater, 1982. Courtesy of Lee Harris Pomeroy.

Helen Hayes Theater demolition protest, Joe Papp in center, 1982. Courtesy of Lee Harris Pomeroy.

In the 1980s, there were two distinct districts of theaters in what is and was referred to as Times Square. One, mostly north of 42nd St., was "Broadway" - both the physical place and the economy of the legitimate theaters. The other was the downscale or derelict historic theaters on W. 42nd St. such as the New Amsterdam and Victory (restored as the New Victory). In both venues, many stakeholders asserted conflicting interests and objectives.

For the industry of Broadway and large theater owners and producers such as the Shubert and Nederlander organizations, their physical properties were both businesses and real estate assets. Early twentieth-century theaters were mostly low-rise structures occupying land that had the potential to be developed for a "highest and best use" - to apply the parlance of real estate. This use would be skyscrapers; indeed, with recent zoning law incentives constructing new theaters within towers was encouraged.

Courtesy of Lee Harris Pomeroy

Many feared that skyscrapers would overwhelm the district with their height and bulk and corporate office buildings and tenants would change its essential character. The drawings (above) by Lee Harris Pomeroy, an architect who led a study by the group "Save the Theatres, Inc.," pictured the contrast between the existing conditions of high-rise development in the theater district with a potential full build out under the Special District Zoning Resolution approved in 1982.

For actors and other theater artists, the survival of Broadway meant jobs, but many also became active in the preservationists' cause to save the historic buildings, which at that time had no landmark protection. The demolition of the Morosco and Helen Hayes theaters in 1982 ignited protests, including the one documented in the photograph of Joseph Papp being interviewed on the site. In 1988, twenty-eight of the district's historic theaters were approved for landmark designation.

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POSTMODERN SKYSCRAPERS

In 1983, the developer George Klein and his company Park Tower Realty were awarded the development rights for all four skyscraper sites at the corners of Broadway and Seventh Avenue at 42nd Street. The Government - in the guise of the 42nd St. Development Project (42DP) - established the size and sites of the towers, a total of 4.1 million sq. ft. of commercial space.

Klein chose as his architect for all four towers Philip Johnson, who was then in his late seventies and had reigned for a decade as the doyen of American architecture. A few years earlier, Johnson had essentially invented the "Postmodern skyscraper" with his design for the headquarters for AT&T, which featured a masonry curtain wall and sported an ornamental "Chippendale top."

Johnson, seen here in front of an enormous model of their project with his partner John Burgee, treated the commission as an opportunity to reshape Times Square by creating an ensemble of buildings with matching granite bases, a checkerboard of punch windows, and glass mansard roofs. Like Rockefeller Center, "Times Square Center" was intended to create a sense of place through its monumentality and harmony of materials.

Critics of the project from many quarters spoke out against the very premises of the Johnson and Burgee first scheme, which included the demolition and elimination of the original Times Tower. Many variations of the design ensued.

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ANOTHER POSTMODERNISM

Just as the over-scaled, collage classicism of Johnson and Burgee's Times Square Center represented one aspect of 1980s Postmodernism, the Times Tower Site Competition with its 565 entries reflected a different set of "pomo" ideas: multiplicity, irony, and fascination with semiotics and buildings as signs.

The competition grew directly out of the widespread negative reaction to the monumentality of the Johnson and Burgee design, which also proposed to demolish the remains of the original Times Tower to serve as a forecourt for their ensemble. The Municipal Art Society, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), organized an "ideas competition" for alternative proposals for the triangular site. The submissions were local, national, and international and spoke to the notoriety of the controversy over the future of Times Square.

The records of those names have, unfortunately, been lost, and the great majority of original boards were not returned after the jury and exhibition of the winners. News accounts of the events have made it possible for The Skyscraper Museum to contact the artists and assemble many of the original boards or make facsimiles. One of the fullest accounts of the competition and its winners was published in the November 1984 Oculus, a newsletter of the AIA New York Chapter, pages of which are reproduced here. The proposals represented a cacophony of architectural directions, from poetic musings, to irreverent one-liners, to theory-driven manifestos.

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TTIMES SQUARE CENTER, 1984 and 1989.