Committee to Reclaim Times Square

August 20, 1989|By Russell W. Baker, The Christian Science Monitor.

NEW YORK — Ah, Times Square. Now that was a place-for great theater, cabaret, hotels or just a stroll with a sweetheart below the neon lights. It was also the site of some the nation`s largest and most emotional gatherings, from ringing in the New Year to proclaiming victory over the Nazis.

Those were the memories of what is known as the crossroads of the world, and the reason Times Square has been at the top of most tourist itineraries for 80 years, the undisputed pulsating heart of New York.

...But Times Square has become an urban wasteland, a dangerous place with open drug dealing, drinking and crime. The elegant restaurants have been replaced by fast-food outlets and the grand theaters shuttered or showing kung-fu or X-rated movies. Most New Yorkers stay away.

...Brendan Gill, an architectural critic and preservationist who heads the Committee to Reclaim Times Square, said the plan is ``a farce.``

``The war to save the theater district has been lost,`` he said, noting that 42d Street once housed more than 35 theaters. Fewer than 10 remain, most of them cinemas, some pornographic. Gill charges that the corporations that own many of today`s Broadway theaters, most scattered north of 42d Street, are not concerned with preserving an art form.

``The idea you can solve profound sociological problems by building skyscrapers is transparently false,`` Gill said. ``You don`t wrestle with them by putting up buildings for hot-shot corporate law firms to move into. . . . It (the plan) is a conspiracy to take away the one sort of village green-open place-we have.``

Gill charges that a subtext of the plan is that the area will be flooded with white and white-collar workers who will go home at 5 p.m.

Although sponsors plan to put neon signs on the buildings to re-create something of the old Times Square feel, Gill said it just won`t be the same. There was daylight and skylight coming through the original signs, he said.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-08-20/business/8901060102_1_times-square-subway-station-renovation