CANYON:
BROADWAY AND EXCHANGE PLACE
JULY 16, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 150
Canyon:
Broadway and Exchange Place, variant image (left)
Broadway and Exchange Place, 1932 (CGLI)(right)
Facing Broadway, Abbott stood on Exchange Place and pointed her camera upward, photographing three office towers: the Adams Building (1914) at 61 Broadway (center), Exchange Court (1898) at 52 Broadway (left), and the North American Building (1907) at 60 Broadway (right). The "canyon" effect is due to the extreme narrowness of Exchange Place and the apparent height of the skyscrapers. Erected before World War I, these structures were not especially tall by 1930s standards. Indeed, the photograph's geometric complexity is created by their drastically foreshortened, varied heights: 33, 12, and 23 stories, respectively.
Abbott's desire to flatten a vertiginous view into a graphic pattern is more dramatically seen in a rejected variant. Stepping out from Exchange Place onto Broadway, Abbott looked up at the Adams Building (left), Exchange Court (top), and the North American Building (right). The wide, white diagonal space shows the sky over Broadway, and the narrow, jagged diagonal space shows the small amount of light between buildings on Exchange Place.
The Adams Building still stands, but the two older, lower buildings have been replaced by modern towers. The "canyon" remains, but the visual excitement of Abbott's composition, which relied upon the varied heights and corniced rooflines of the older buildings, has been lost.
In 1932, Abbott had interpreted this site very differently. From the tenth floor of the Adams Building, she had aimed her camera down Exchange Place, using a very low tripod that allowed her to steady an 8-x-10-inch view camera on a windowsill (O'Neal, 130).