There are these long, narrow strips of granite embedded in the sidewalks of Broadway in Lower Manhattan. I’ve seen them as far south as Battery Park and as far north as the Woolworth Building. They’re spaced a few yards apart. Each of them is inscribed with some famous 20th-century person/event and a date. For months now, I’ve been dying to know why they’re there and what they’re for.
I finally posted an Ask MetaFilter thread about it this afternoon, but before someone posted the answer I wound up figuring it out by myself. It suddenly hit me that that part of Broadway is known as the Canyon of Heroes, used for ticker-tape parades. (My brother and I went to the parade for the New York Rangers after they won the Stanley Cup in 1994.) So I typed “canyon of heroes” into Google and came up with this and this. It turns out there’s a granite slab for each ticker-tape parade that has been held in Lower Manhattan since 1886.
And here (linked from one of those pages) is a list of Manhattan ticker-tape parades through 2000.
Pingback: The Tin Man » Canyon of Heroes II
“I was in a ticker tape parade…” a very handsome man in his late 30s recounted to me recently. Being on the 1984 US Olympic swim, winning a gold medal, meeting Reagan at The White House and having confetti thrown at him during that glorious march were vividly recalled.
Taking tourists on a Lower Manhattan walking tour that begins at Battery Park winding along The Canyon of Heroes to Wall Street, Ground Zero and concluding at City Hall, I am well aware of those enchanting marble plaques in the sidewalks.
During the flamboyant 20s and the dark days of The Depression it is fascinating to observe how often the parades were held. Due to the high cost of street closings, security and sanitation they are rarely given today. It is charming to see how in simpler times presidents of Brazil and the Philippines, obscure military figures, a send off for the Olympic team were accorded the same honor as Lindbergh, Earhart and Churchill.
It was after lecturing to a group that the swimmer shared his thrilling memories leaving us all awed.