Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (27 page)

Even the subway had its own marquee, a few yards west of the Crossroads of the World—Broadway & 42nd Street. Burlesque, such as Minsky’s Republic, would be outlawed by Mayor La Guardia the year this was taken, 1940.

Forty-second Street, closed for a stickball exhibition in 1943.

Hubert’s Museum and Flea Circus, late ‘40s. Forty-second Street’s legendary bowels of show business. On exhibit here in the basement, the Great Waldo, wolfing down live mice, and a Filipino jungle creep.
Lower right:
Night in the Square, late ‘40s, before 25¢ became the community exchange rate.

Nobody seemed much concerned minutes before a civil defense alert on June 15,1955. This was taken from the Times Tower, looking north. It was a nationwide test carried out as if enemy planes were about to drop 50 hydrogen bombs. Redevelopment would finally do the job a few decades later.

The streets were cleaner and the faces whiter along the all-night theaters of 42nd Street in August 1958. Truck drivers and murderers in raincoats could catch the latest Bardot flick at the Apollo.

TIMES SQUARE PRESENT

The Final Days

Twilight on Forty Deuce, 1979. Worn down to splendid disrepair.

Peepland, at the former locale of Hubert’s Flea Circus.

Quintessential gag shop, stationed near the corner of Broadway & 42nd since 1953.
Right:
On Broadway.

On Seventh Avenue.
Right:
Forty-fifth Street at night.

Raven De La Croix in 1982 during her Melody Burlesk days. At right, an Uncle Lou scrapbook pose with his number-one niece, Raven.

Amazon peep-queen turned stripper, Candy Staton.
Bight:
“These crazy nuts off the streets walk in and I straighten ‘em out,” says Pee Wee, pacing like a hen at Hawaii Kai’s entrance since 1960.

Porn takes no holiday. The six major peeps grind 24 hours, each day of the year.

The Lord & the devil side by side: Holy Cross Church, built on 42nd in 1870; Show World, a half block away, established in 1974.