HERALD SQUARE
AUGUST 16, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 144

HERALD SQUARE
West 34th Street and Broadway
AUGUST 16, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 145A

Herald Square, Full Negative (Abbott File 144)

In the 1890s, the intersection of Broadway and West 34th Street was briefly the city's newspaper and entertainment mecca, acquiring its name from the fanciful Italian palazzo built in 1894 by McKim, Mead & White for James Gordon Bennett's Herald. Most of the building was demolished in 1921 for the Herald Square Building, a 24-story office tower, but a remnant can be seen in Abbott's photograph; it was occupied by the men's store Rogers Peet and by Simmons Tours. When Macy's moved from 14th to 34th Street in 1902 and built the "world's largest department store," Herald Square became the city's principle shopping district. The billboards so prominent in Abbott's photograph are perched on a five-story, nineteenth-century building whose owners refused to sell to Macy's.

Abbott took two photographs of Herald Square from the third- floor balcony of the stylish McAlpin Hotel (1913) at the southeast corner of Broadway and 34th Street. A panoramic view shows the whole Square and features a long stretch of the Sixth Avenue El. A second view focuses on the traffic and pedestrian crowds at the intersection of Broadway and 34th Street. Abbott chose to print a detail of this negative, in which buses, taxis, and trucks vie for space with a mass of mostly female shoppers. The appearance of Herald Square remains much the same today, although the magic energy of Abbott's era has worn off. Macy's legendary competitors Gimbel's and Saks no longer grace the Square, the McAlpin Hotel is no longer fashionable, and the remnant of the original Herald palazzo has been replaced by an undistinguished four-story commercial structure.

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