Giant Times Square Advertising Billboards Of The Past
New York’s Times Square at night 60 Years ago, 1954 photo: Charles Shaw
The New York Times article about the new eight story high, block long, LED illuminated billboard that will be put into use on Tuesday night, November 18, 2014, made me think about some of the classic advertising signs that were in place during the 1940’s and 1950’s at the crossroads of the world.
Bond Clothiers sign, 1948, Times Square looking north
Chief among these ads was the dramatic Bond Clothiers sign taking up the entire Broadway block between 44th and 45th Streets. The 200 foot wide, 50 foot high billboard was brightly lit up at night and had a waterfall cascading between the two large scantily clad statues flanking it. The figures appeared nude during by day and had electric lights draped around them which produced a quasi-covering effect on the statues when the lights went on.
With two miles of neon, it was a colorful spectacle to behold in person, especially at nig
ht. The sign was only up from 1948-1954.
We previously showed what the area looked like at night in our story about the giant New York snowstorm of 1948.
The Bond sign replaced an earlier sign for Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum that also was breathtaking with its neon aquatic design. Designed by Dorothy Shepard, it occupied the site from about 1936 to 1948.
The other billboard that attracted a lot of attention in Times Square was the Camel cigarette advertisement sign located between 43rd and 44th Streets.
Times Square Camel advertising sign Broadway looking south from 44th Street
The Camel ad blew giant simulated smoke rings. It was designed by Douglas Leigh who had also came up with the Bond sign. It remained in place from 1941 – 1966. In 1999 all cigarette billboard advertising was banned.
Finally, in the 1950’s at the northern end of Times Square (Duffy Square) on 47th Street, stood three outstanding billboards: Pepsi-Cola, Admiral Television and Appliances, and Canadian Club Imported Whisky.
What was appealing about all these old billboard ads is that they were dazzling. You knew what was being advertised and it was conveyed simply with a sparsity of words and an abundance of neon.
Today Times Square’s advertising is an overwhelming mish-mash of distraction.
The new giant digital billboard will have Google as the debut, exclusive advertiser from November 24 until the New Year 2015. A digital art exhibition by Universal Everything studio collective will kick off the billboard’s first week starting November 18. From the test photo below it seems like it will be an incredibly bright and eye-catching display.
Testing the new Times Square giant digital billboard photo Richard Perry The New York Times
Who knows, maybe I’ll be impressed with this modern marvel of big screen technology. But probably not.
If the recent past of the area is any indication of the future, the ads themselves will be like every other billboard designed for gawking tourists: flashy, fast moving, lots of cuts with more irrelevant content added to the already gaudy Times Square.
For a color photo essay look back at Times Square in 1954 click here.
How do I purchase the rights to publish a picture on this page of Times Square, by Charles Shaw, 1954? The one at the top of this page? I would like to use it in a forthcoming book.
My grandpa worked ’til the 50s in a pawn shop across Broadway from the Camel sign. We would watch the Macy’s floats be inflated there on Thanksgiving. I’m looking for a photo of the pawn shop.
I care about this stuff
When was the new narrower sign display at the north end of TS installed? When were the old signs (I think Sony, Midori, Coke and 42nd St were the last such in the mid 1980s) taken down?
Thanks- dp
I’m not sure. Anyone have an answer?
The old 47th Street “spectaculars” – the last atop 1572-76 Broadway (a.k.a. the “Publicity Building”) – were all taken down in 1990 when the building was prepared for demolition. Coke was around the longest at that point, the original spectacular first activated on New Year’s Eve 1965 (the day before the start of the 13-day transit strike) and modified to its essential final form in the fall of 1969; with other modifications (such as replacing the neon “it’s the real thing Coke” with a blurb for Diet Coke), it remained to the bitter end. Above it was the ad for Suntory Whiskey Royal, which was the second of two stints there (1986-90; it was previously there from 1978-80, having replaced Canadian Club, and in-between Midori Melon Liqueur advertised there).
The Sony spectacular – mounted atop the former Studebaker Building at 1600 Broadway – was originally under the domain of the Douglas Leigh Organization (which replaced Mr. Leigh’s prior entity, Douglas Leigh, Inc. in 1970), mounted originally in mid-1970. It remained even after Leigh sold his billboards – and his company – to Van Wagner Outdoor Advertising. It was up as late as 1992, but as 2 Times Square was put up by then (1991-92 was when the newer Suntory and Coke ads were put up), its days were numbered.
And a few other tidbits: While the Bond display was only up from 1948 to 1954, its zipper (which was installed and fired up in the same year that display was activated) lasted much longer than that. But when Douglas Leigh sold the rights to the top to Pepsi, the Trans-Lux controls for the zipper – up to that point, the longest uninterrupted such zipper in Times Square history, lasting 496 columns long and consisting of 6,944 bulbs housed inside what Artkraft Strauss called “cups” – were severed, and Leigh had to go elsewhere to have the zipper powered. After a 3-year run where a very wide font, controlled by one of those old-style systems which took up entire rooms to operate, was used, Leigh starting in 1958 used controls from Naxon Telesign of Chicago for that zipper. From 1959 to 1965 it was largely off, except for a period in 1964 when “The Fall of the Roman Empire” was being promoted, until in fall 1965 the Mutual Broadcasting System took over operation, and its length was shaved down to 425 columns and 5,950 bulbs (whose “cups” were removed in 1957); it continued in operation until 1977 when Bond Clothes itself shut down. Most of the time a square, blocky font was used, but from 1967-70 and again intermittently from 1976-77 in alternation with same, a rounder font display from Telesign (created for use on the news zipper around the Allied Chemical Tower) was used on that zipper