ABANDONED MIDTOWN, 2020

As we embark on another summer in NYC, my 66th, it can be said that summers have grown in uncomfortability in recent years. Heat waves in which it stays in the 90s for a week haven’t increased in occurrence, but humidity is much more consistent and cool spells much less frequent. Until recently you could get a few mornings in the 50s even in July and August, which no longer occurs. In July 2020, it was the midst of another humid spell and because I had been cooped up for awhile, I ventured forth and walked 34th Street from Penn Station to the East River.

In the peak pandemic during 2020, I roved all over. But things seemed relatively normal, with people about, until I forayed into Manhattan, which on July 18 was utterly deserted. I think I saw ten other people on 34th Street. I think part of it was because it was so broiling that people decided to sit by their air conditioners. Conditions were so surreal, I was glad I was able to capture them with the camera, as shown on this FNY page.

The R.H. Macy & Co. department store has held down the parallelogram between 6th and 7th Avenues and West 34th and 35th Streets since 1902, when the concern moved uptown from Ladies’ Mile at 6th and West 14th. The store’s history is well-known: founder Rowland Hussey Macy, who had served on a whaling ship and acquired a red star tattoo, opened general stores in 1851 in Haverhill, MA and in 1858 in New York City. which outgrew its original Ladies’ Mile location. Macy’s hired architecture firm De Lemos & Cordes to design its Midtown Herald Square flagship at 6th and West 34th, which included its original grand 34th Street entrance with the clock seen here. Additions in 1924 and 1928 expanded the building west to 7th Avenue; two small properties at 6th and 34th and 7th and 35th held out and were not acquired by Macy’s until decades later.

I was a Macy’s employee from April 2000-October 2004, working in the copywriting bullpen on the 17th floor on the 7th Avenue side. I was proud to work at the self-named World’s Largest Store but it was not an especially pleasant tenure; the person who hired me was eased into a different role a short time after I was hired, and the replacement supervisor took an immediate dislike, and whatever errors I made were magnified.

However, while I was there I took an immediate liking to the infrastructure. When I got the chance I would wander off onto the 17th floor ledge and got photos of the street below, and I would ride the original 1902 wooden escalators. For my lunch hour, I would rove all over midtown and into Central Park, and even took a train to downtown Brooklyn a few times, getting photos that made their way onto the website as well as Forgotten NY the Book in 2006.

Speaking of books, Arcadia Publishing approached me in 2002 to do a picture book on the history of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (which originated in 1924), and I requested access to the store’s on-premises archives for research. Request denied! All kinds of excuses were proffered, but I realized from the start that their public relations did not want a low-level employee writing that kind of tome. Sure enough, a few years later, after I left Macy’s, the book came out on Arcadia by a different author. When the commission came for Forgotten NY The Book, I only told one or two other people at Macy’s about it. Management, bless ’em, tends to hold it against you when evaluation or bonus time comes and you have made too many errors for their liking. Having been published was a detriment. (“Why did you spell that word wrong? You wrote a book!” was an argument that was made.) I remain somewhat embittered about it. All I can tell you is, I do take pride in having been on the Macy’s staff for 4 years; but it was an otherwise unsatisfying experience.

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6/10/24