FATHER DUFFY, TIMES SQUARE
Triangle bounded by Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and West 46th Street
APRIL 14, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 255

In the 1930s, Times Square's electrically lit commercial glitter was already a world-famous symbol of New York. Abbott's only photograph of the square, however, is this irreverent image of the soon-to-be unveiled statue of Father Duffy. After serving as lieutenant colonel and chaplain in the Spanish-American War and World War I, Francis P. Duffy was pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church at 329 West 42nd Street in the heart of Hell's Kitchen, the Irish-American neighborhood west of Times Square. After his death in 1932, the parish gave to the city a bronze statue by Charles Keck mounted on a granite Celtic cross in memory of "a life of service for God and country."

Abbott was not interested in either the theatrical life of Times Square or in Hell's Kitchen. The bound and gagged war hero set down amidst gargantuan product advertisements aroused her surrealist sense of the absurd. As she hurriedly exposed a negative of the statue, a crowd gathered, and a policeman shooed her away (McQuaid, 135).

The statue of Father Duffy still stands in Times Square, often surrounded by crowds waiting to purchase half-price theater tickets at the TKTS booth, erected in 1973.

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