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conulyhttp://nyti.ms/HtwLAP
The green eyes pierce the night, arresting pedestrians who notice the mute blinking orbs above the bustle of Herald Square in Manhattan. But for the most part, the glowing specters go unnoticed by many.
People stare into their cellphones at a bus stop across the street. Businessmen walking home focus on their routes ahead. A double-decker bus, stopping at a light, alerts riders to what they might otherwise miss, but usually only the most observant New Yorkers stop to ponder the glow.
It comes from the eyes of two stern-looking bronze owls perched atop a tall granite monument in the northern part of the park in Herald Square. They are among New York City’s more obscure architectural oddities. Lighting up every night from dusk until dawn, they can be seen blocks away, their blinks lasting approximately two seconds. But they are not modern additions.
The owls have glowed nightly, barring periodic electrical disruptions, since the monument was completed in 1940, and they were lighting up elsewhere even earlier than that.
If they appear mysterious to people now — recent hypotheses from passers-by included National Security Agency surveillance, Halloween decoration and pigeon deterrent — then some midcentury New Yorkers were probably downright frightened by them.
The eyes are made from thick, green-tinted glass. Green LEDs were installed behind them in a 2007 restoration. Before then, incandescent bulbs sat in the owls’ skulls and projected as green through the glass, Don Bussolini, a capital projects director for the 34th Street Partnership, said.
How these green-eyed owls first came to be is stranger than most would imagine.
The two owls were once part of a flock of 22 that roosted along the roofline of the old New York Herald newspaper building, for which the square was named. The owls lit up on the hour with the ringing of a clock bell that was part of the building.
The Herald was one of the most popular American newspapers for much of the 19th century, and the current owls in the square rest on a monument dedicated to its founder and publisher, James Gordon Bennett, and his son and successor, James Gordon Bennett Jr.
While the elder Mr. Bennett’s legacy is that of a pioneering newspaperman, his son’s is that of a clever but eccentric playboy who inherited the newspaper when he was in his mid-20s. He apparently enjoyed riding his horse-drawn coach at full-speed down country roads while naked and yelling, and among his quirks was an obsession with owls.
According to historical accounts, an owl adorned The Herald’s masthead, and the younger Mr. Bennett had owls on his stationery, owned live ones, wore owl-engraved cuff links and wanted to be buried in a 200-foot-tall, owl-shape tomb in Washington Heights. That never happened, but in 1918, The New York Times reported that “the owl was to be hollow, and was to contain his sarcophagus.”
After The Herald moved to 42nd Street in 1918, the sculptures were removed in 1921 before the demolition of the old building and later bequeathed to New York University, along with the clock and accompanying roof sculptures: a large statue of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, and two bronze blacksmiths who appeared to ring her bell. All of those pieces eventually became incorporated into the Herald Square monument. Unlike the owls, Minerva and her bell-ringers are well-known park fixtures today.
On a recent night, the owls blinked above the square, ignored by countless passers-by, but the green glow did not elude a group of electricians replacing some lights at Macy’s. When asked about the eyes, one of the workers, Angelo Tzoulis, 39, said, “We’ve been staring at that eerie thing the past few days!”
“I think it is special,” he said of the younger Mr. Bennett’s owl obsession. “Everyone has something. I like hunting.”
Oscar Fuller, another worker, considered the statue’s symbolism. “The owl represents a watcher,” he said. “He oversees. It’s like a guardian.”
Later that night, Katie Rogers, 27, and Zafer Sevimcok, 36, approached the monument as the clock started to chime. The square was quiet and the green eyes boldly punctuated the serene atmosphere. Ms. Rogers pointed up in wonder. Mr. Sevimcok was more startled. “I didn’t think, ‘That’s cool,’ ” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s scary.’ It just didn’t fit with the statue.”
But a man holding a cup and asking people for change said he noticed the eyes a year ago, and had often wondered about them ever since. “When I first saw it,” he said, “I thought, ‘Cameras everywhere, even the owls’ eyes!’ ”
The man, offering his name only as J. B. and his age as 56, found Mr. Bennett’s peculiar passion for the birds endearing. “I think it’s kind of cool,” he said.
Gesturing to an owl he remarked, “Those are his eyes.”
Dancing With the Cars
http://nyti.ms/16sWl1V
A busy Manhattan intersection during the morning rush might seem an unlikely place to make your dance floor, but that’s where Mentoria Hutchinson mixes it up with thousands of impatient drivers every day.
“When you get the people’s attention, you can basically get them to do anything,” said Ms. Hutchinson, 61, a traffic enforcement agent in Manhattan who, instead of shouts or whistles, uses dance moves to get drivers’ attention.
“I’ve never seen anyone dance and be mad,” she said one recent weekday morning at her post, directing traffic coming off the Ed KochQueensboro Bridge.
Telling drivers to stop or go, or turn or go straight, may sound simple, but these are aggravated commuters limping off a traffic-clogged bridge. So Ms. Hutchinson cheers them up with her quickstep shuffle and jaunty gestures.
Every minute or so, the traffic light switches the flow, and she responds like a line dancer, throwing up a fluttering hand to halt cars, and after a sashay and a stylish quarter-turn, waving on the anxious eastbound drivers on 62nd Street between First and Second Avenues.
A quick hand-jive signals stragglers to step on it, or she may stop them by pushing down rhythmically with both hands, never breaking tempo.
Between the rows of moving cars, she struts her stuff and never flinches. Her sneakers pound the painted traffic lines and her uniform — the bright green reflective vest and the white gloves — highlights her moves.
Ms. Hutchinson listens to old-school R&B on her drive to work, and the songs echo in her head throughout her 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift, despite the street noise and crackle of her walkie-talkie. Drivers cheer her on with a honk, a thumbs-up or a yell.
“Go, baby, keep it working,” a truck driver yelled one recent morning.
When a driver seemed reluctant to turn in the lane, Ms. Hutchinson yelled, “Turn your wheel, Boo-Boo, turn your wheel!” as if suggesting a new dance move.
While easing congestion on the street, Ms. Hutchinson sometimes creates it on the sidewalk: an audience of pedestrians who gather to enjoy the show. On weekends, she works overtime shifts all over the city, often at parades and in heavily traveled tourist areas. Many videos of her have been shared “all over the world,” she said.
Ms. Hutchinson has not always danced on the job. In 1983, three years after she began directing traffic, Ms. Hutchinson was hit by a car while working, she said. She spent the next decade out on disability with a back injury, only to return and get hit a second time, less seriously.
“After that, I was real scared coming back, and the only way I could overcome that fear was to dance,” she said. “I started to step, step, and throw in a little flavor. I saw that it was better than being cursed out by drivers.”
Ms. Hutchinson said she had always been a performer and fervent dancer, since growing up in East New York, Brooklyn, and attending Erasmus Hall High School, where she was on the baton-twirling squad.
Prince and Princess, her children, now 24 years old, are twins she adopted from her niece when they were 18 months. Princess is now a traffic enforcement agent in the Bronx. Prince has cerebral palsy and has required her constant care.
“My son can’t walk or talk or feed himself — he’s totally dependent on me,” she said at the intersection. “When I’m home I have to do everything for him. So my fun is here, getting people energized, which also keeps me going.”
Ms. Hutchinson said she lived for many years in the Bronx and moved upstate 15 years ago to Monroe, in Orange County, for a better environment for Prince, though it increased her commute and distanced her from friends and family. She leaves him with a home health attendant at 3 each morning and drives 90 minutes to work, returning in the afternoon before he comes home from day care.
“He’s healthy and happy, and as long as I’m living, I’m going to make sure he stays happy,” Ms. Hutchinson said.
Her companion, Frederick Schnell, an ambulance driver for Harlem Hospital, died last year. “That put more of a burden on me, but God’s been really good to me,” Ms. Hutchinson said, and she returned to dancing with the cars.
I didn't realize conductors had to point at the sign! Guess I never paid attention. Cute video, though.
http://newyorkers.livejournal.com/6220078.html
The green eyes pierce the night, arresting pedestrians who notice the mute blinking orbs above the bustle of Herald Square in Manhattan. But for the most part, the glowing specters go unnoticed by many.
People stare into their cellphones at a bus stop across the street. Businessmen walking home focus on their routes ahead. A double-decker bus, stopping at a light, alerts riders to what they might otherwise miss, but usually only the most observant New Yorkers stop to ponder the glow.
It comes from the eyes of two stern-looking bronze owls perched atop a tall granite monument in the northern part of the park in Herald Square. They are among New York City’s more obscure architectural oddities. Lighting up every night from dusk until dawn, they can be seen blocks away, their blinks lasting approximately two seconds. But they are not modern additions.
The owls have glowed nightly, barring periodic electrical disruptions, since the monument was completed in 1940, and they were lighting up elsewhere even earlier than that.
If they appear mysterious to people now — recent hypotheses from passers-by included National Security Agency surveillance, Halloween decoration and pigeon deterrent — then some midcentury New Yorkers were probably downright frightened by them.
The eyes are made from thick, green-tinted glass. Green LEDs were installed behind them in a 2007 restoration. Before then, incandescent bulbs sat in the owls’ skulls and projected as green through the glass, Don Bussolini, a capital projects director for the 34th Street Partnership, said.
How these green-eyed owls first came to be is stranger than most would imagine.
The two owls were once part of a flock of 22 that roosted along the roofline of the old New York Herald newspaper building, for which the square was named. The owls lit up on the hour with the ringing of a clock bell that was part of the building.
The Herald was one of the most popular American newspapers for much of the 19th century, and the current owls in the square rest on a monument dedicated to its founder and publisher, James Gordon Bennett, and his son and successor, James Gordon Bennett Jr.
While the elder Mr. Bennett’s legacy is that of a pioneering newspaperman, his son’s is that of a clever but eccentric playboy who inherited the newspaper when he was in his mid-20s. He apparently enjoyed riding his horse-drawn coach at full-speed down country roads while naked and yelling, and among his quirks was an obsession with owls.
According to historical accounts, an owl adorned The Herald’s masthead, and the younger Mr. Bennett had owls on his stationery, owned live ones, wore owl-engraved cuff links and wanted to be buried in a 200-foot-tall, owl-shape tomb in Washington Heights. That never happened, but in 1918, The New York Times reported that “the owl was to be hollow, and was to contain his sarcophagus.”
After The Herald moved to 42nd Street in 1918, the sculptures were removed in 1921 before the demolition of the old building and later bequeathed to New York University, along with the clock and accompanying roof sculptures: a large statue of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, and two bronze blacksmiths who appeared to ring her bell. All of those pieces eventually became incorporated into the Herald Square monument. Unlike the owls, Minerva and her bell-ringers are well-known park fixtures today.
On a recent night, the owls blinked above the square, ignored by countless passers-by, but the green glow did not elude a group of electricians replacing some lights at Macy’s. When asked about the eyes, one of the workers, Angelo Tzoulis, 39, said, “We’ve been staring at that eerie thing the past few days!”
“I think it is special,” he said of the younger Mr. Bennett’s owl obsession. “Everyone has something. I like hunting.”
Oscar Fuller, another worker, considered the statue’s symbolism. “The owl represents a watcher,” he said. “He oversees. It’s like a guardian.”
Later that night, Katie Rogers, 27, and Zafer Sevimcok, 36, approached the monument as the clock started to chime. The square was quiet and the green eyes boldly punctuated the serene atmosphere. Ms. Rogers pointed up in wonder. Mr. Sevimcok was more startled. “I didn’t think, ‘That’s cool,’ ” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s scary.’ It just didn’t fit with the statue.”
But a man holding a cup and asking people for change said he noticed the eyes a year ago, and had often wondered about them ever since. “When I first saw it,” he said, “I thought, ‘Cameras everywhere, even the owls’ eyes!’ ”
The man, offering his name only as J. B. and his age as 56, found Mr. Bennett’s peculiar passion for the birds endearing. “I think it’s kind of cool,” he said.
Gesturing to an owl he remarked, “Those are his eyes.”
Dancing With the Cars
http://nyti.ms/16sWl1V
A busy Manhattan intersection during the morning rush might seem an unlikely place to make your dance floor, but that’s where Mentoria Hutchinson mixes it up with thousands of impatient drivers every day.
“When you get the people’s attention, you can basically get them to do anything,” said Ms. Hutchinson, 61, a traffic enforcement agent in Manhattan who, instead of shouts or whistles, uses dance moves to get drivers’ attention.
“I’ve never seen anyone dance and be mad,” she said one recent weekday morning at her post, directing traffic coming off the Ed KochQueensboro Bridge.
Telling drivers to stop or go, or turn or go straight, may sound simple, but these are aggravated commuters limping off a traffic-clogged bridge. So Ms. Hutchinson cheers them up with her quickstep shuffle and jaunty gestures.
Every minute or so, the traffic light switches the flow, and she responds like a line dancer, throwing up a fluttering hand to halt cars, and after a sashay and a stylish quarter-turn, waving on the anxious eastbound drivers on 62nd Street between First and Second Avenues.
A quick hand-jive signals stragglers to step on it, or she may stop them by pushing down rhythmically with both hands, never breaking tempo.
Between the rows of moving cars, she struts her stuff and never flinches. Her sneakers pound the painted traffic lines and her uniform — the bright green reflective vest and the white gloves — highlights her moves.
Ms. Hutchinson listens to old-school R&B on her drive to work, and the songs echo in her head throughout her 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift, despite the street noise and crackle of her walkie-talkie. Drivers cheer her on with a honk, a thumbs-up or a yell.
“Go, baby, keep it working,” a truck driver yelled one recent morning.
When a driver seemed reluctant to turn in the lane, Ms. Hutchinson yelled, “Turn your wheel, Boo-Boo, turn your wheel!” as if suggesting a new dance move.
While easing congestion on the street, Ms. Hutchinson sometimes creates it on the sidewalk: an audience of pedestrians who gather to enjoy the show. On weekends, she works overtime shifts all over the city, often at parades and in heavily traveled tourist areas. Many videos of her have been shared “all over the world,” she said.
Ms. Hutchinson has not always danced on the job. In 1983, three years after she began directing traffic, Ms. Hutchinson was hit by a car while working, she said. She spent the next decade out on disability with a back injury, only to return and get hit a second time, less seriously.
“After that, I was real scared coming back, and the only way I could overcome that fear was to dance,” she said. “I started to step, step, and throw in a little flavor. I saw that it was better than being cursed out by drivers.”
Ms. Hutchinson said she had always been a performer and fervent dancer, since growing up in East New York, Brooklyn, and attending Erasmus Hall High School, where she was on the baton-twirling squad.
Prince and Princess, her children, now 24 years old, are twins she adopted from her niece when they were 18 months. Princess is now a traffic enforcement agent in the Bronx. Prince has cerebral palsy and has required her constant care.
“My son can’t walk or talk or feed himself — he’s totally dependent on me,” she said at the intersection. “When I’m home I have to do everything for him. So my fun is here, getting people energized, which also keeps me going.”
Ms. Hutchinson said she lived for many years in the Bronx and moved upstate 15 years ago to Monroe, in Orange County, for a better environment for Prince, though it increased her commute and distanced her from friends and family. She leaves him with a home health attendant at 3 each morning and drives 90 minutes to work, returning in the afternoon before he comes home from day care.
“He’s healthy and happy, and as long as I’m living, I’m going to make sure he stays happy,” Ms. Hutchinson said.
Her companion, Frederick Schnell, an ambulance driver for Harlem Hospital, died last year. “That put more of a burden on me, but God’s been really good to me,” Ms. Hutchinson said, and she returned to dancing with the cars.
I didn't realize conductors had to point at the sign! Guess I never paid attention. Cute video, though.
http://newyorkers.livejournal.com/6220078.html
