ABSTRACT
One of these streets, perhaps at the core of the Big Apple, is 42nd Street; song, motion picture and musical play have been dedicated to it. The street traverses midtown Manhattan; as one travels from east side to west side, the difference in economic standards is literally astonishing. On the east, arisen from the depths of what were teeming tenements and smell-sickening slaughter-houses are the world headquarters of the United Nations and the massive residential development called Tudor City. Going west, one passes the beautiful, park-like atmosphere of the Ford Foundation Building, the information centers of the Daily News Building and the New York Public Library, the modernity of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and the vastness of Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building—once the tallest in the world (AIA Guide to New York City [1st ed.], p. 121). However, starting with what was once a potter’s field, now known as Bryant Park, the tawdry, “honkeytonk” part of New York, the Times Square area, begins. If the east side represents the zenith of New York, Times Square, with its flotsam and jetsam prostitutes, pimps, pornographers and other purveyors of poison, represents the nadir of our society. It is an area that has resisted one cleanup after another. 1
