Famous Ankles

Just a short post to point out a famous landmark in Manhattan:  Herald Square.

You know it from “Give My Regards to Broadway” by George M. Cohan and the line that says “remember me to Herald Square” sung by Jimmy Cagney (okay, that was in the movie “Yankee Doodle Dandy”).  But, what’s the deal behind it?

Most of Manhattan is laid out in a grid with the streets going east-west and the avenues going north-south.  There’s the one big exception:  Broadway.  Broadway goes mostly north-south, but with an east-to-west drift.  The grid makes square blocks, but everytime that Broadway crosses an avenue, it causes one of more “splinters” of the blocks to be left over and those bits and pieces are called “squares”.  I’ve yet to see one that’s square, and most of them are pretty much smallish islands.  Of course, Times Square is the most famous (where Broadway crosses 7th Avenue), but Herald Square is probably second (where Broadway crosses 6th Avenue).

Here’s a picture of it from just north.

Nobody would call it big, but they have put some effort to making it look good.

The square is named after the old newspaper “The New York Herald”, just like Times Square is named after The New York Times.  Well, the Herald is long gone, but the Times is still around (however, the Times is moving its operations a little more distant from its current 43rd Street location to 41st Street and a bit further west from where it is now).

Anyway, Herald Square does have a famous neighbor:  Macy’s.

The square’s tower is a monument and celebrates…the New York Herald (actually, its founders).

A closeup of the plaque at the bottom.

You may need to click the picture to be able to read it.

-H

This entry was posted on October 13, 2007 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Broadway, Manhattan, Wanderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.