In a 1940s Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny cartoon, a mad scientist infuses carrots with super juice, turning Bugs into “Super Rabbit.” In one of the gags, Bugs is in flight and meets a horse plodding along and the horse says, “A rabbit? Up here?” This pair of street signs on 5th Avenue and 28th Street, north of Madison Square Park, provoke the same question: what are they doing up there, along with a one-way sign, near the apex of the stoplight? Can motorists see them there?
The answer is that they are a legacy to exterior work being done on #250 5th Avenue at the corner of West 28th, a beautiful white building constructed as the Second National Bank in 1908, by architects McKim, Mead and White. The building is still home to a bank on the ground floor. The signs, formerly mid-shaft as usual, were placed at the apex of the post when the protective sidewalk shed went up.
Work on the building commenced in 2016 and continued for a good six years. In many cases, when sidewalk sheds go up, they don’t come down…even when the buiding they are built around itself has come down. Manhattan boro president Mark Levine has made it his pet project to get these sheds removed at a faster pace, and I can’t say I disagree.
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12/4/24
1 comment
Maybe they’re waiting for the sequel to The Fifth Element, though signs would be anachronistic by then…