I should really save this one for a Chambers Street page, since I recently walked the lower Manhattan route while aiming for the Brooklyn Bridge, whose pedestrian path has finally been freed from bicyclists, who now have a couple of traffic lanes. It’s now rare to see a classic NYC street clock either on the sidewalk or mounted on a building. It’s even rarer to see a wall-mounted clock that’s still working, as The Sun Clock does at #278 Broadway at the NE corner of Chambers.
The green copper clock is mounted on a former department store and newspaper headquarters. The massive structure was built in 1846 for Scottish department store magnate A.T. Stewart, whose dry goods emporium was located in the building. From 1919 to 1950 it was home to The New York Sun newspaper, famed for its “Yes, Virginia” editorial and for the 1835 Great Moon Hoax.
The newspaper’s 1919 copper-faced clocks are still in place on the corners of Broadway and Chambers and Reade with its motto, The Sun Shines for All. The Sun had a shortlived revival on newsstands in the 1990s, but remains as an online entity. In fact, Francis Morrone, who is now the city’s preeminent architecture expert gave Forgotten New York The Book a stellar review in The Sun.
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12/8/21
8 comments
I recall that at one point in the 1990s, when they were filming a movie on lower Broadway near Wall Street (where I worked at the time), they installed duplicates of the Sun Clock and Sun Thermometer near the old American Express Building. Sort of wish they’d kept them.
The Sun’s days as an independent newspaper ended in 1950, but its name lived on as part of a merged paper, The World Telegram and Sun, until that paper’s demise in 1966. That year the WT&S was itself merged into the Journal-American and Herald-Tribune to create a new hybrid paper, the World Journal Tribune, that lasted for about six months in 1966-67. The WJT (WiJit in its short life) represented the combined merger of seven separate 19th century newspapers. Its sudden death was attributed to being an afternoon newspaper at a time when radio and TV provided news at the flick of a dial.
The Sun lived on for a while as the New York World Telegram and Sun. Many subscribed for its daily coverage of the NYC civil service scene.
I hope that at night the clock’s face is back-lit.This would be a very cheering sight on a cold dark night.
Good to see you’re still on the case. Also a favorite. And yep the bike lane is a rare civic good gone right.
Happy season
I delivered the World Telegraph and Sun by bicycle in Borough Park Brooklyn, in the early 60’s. I didn’t know anything about NYC newspaper history in those days. I’d always ask the boss for an extra copy to bring home to read. He’d be suspicious that I might be selling it on the side. He couldn’t believe that a delivery boy would actually READ a newspaper. Anyway, the newspaper strike began around this time in 1962, I missed out on any Christmas tips, and I never went back but I still read a daily newspaper!
It was The World-Telegram and The Sun– with that second “The” in it. An afternoon paper, back when there were morning and afternoon papers. My father often brought it home.
I guess I didn’t read the banner very well…