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This in turn raised the question of exactly how that cycle had gotten started in the first place. One of the authors of the study, Stanley Bruder, argued in a discussion of the history of Times Square that the demise of theaters and restaurants, and the rise of penny arcades and shooting galleries and grinders, which “tended to cater to the lowest common denominator,” drove away “respectable elements.” That is, bad uses attracted bad people, rather than the other way around. And so the opposite must be true as well: “eliminating these businesses through changing the use of the street should cause the undesirable population to leave on its own,” Bruder concluded. While several of his colleagues were more inclined to sympathize with the “undesirable population” than with the “respectable elements,” William Kornblum, the director of the study project, adopted Bruder’s view and made it the central prescriptive device of Bright Light Zone. “A check on the vicious circle of demoralization and decay in the 42nd Street area does depend on increased police details and more forceful application of police action,” Kornblum wrote. “At the same time, all authorities agree that only the economic redevelopment of the area can significantly alter the present patterns of street traffic and vice.”

Here was not only an urban policy but an important act of moral recognition, especially coming from liberal academics: vagrants and hustlers and prostitutes could not be tolerated, or accepted as the price of “authentic” urban life, if the streets were to be made welcoming to “respectable” folk. At the same time, 42nd Street had a role as a low-cost entertainment center that ought not simply be discarded in its wished-for renaissance. And of course, it had a history to be respected, as well. The study raised a question to which there was no obvious answer: how could you eradicate whatever was pathological about 42nd Street and its environs without, at the same time, eliminating everything that made it worth caring about in the first place?

PART TWO

MAKING A NEW FUN PLACE

10.

SELTZER, NOT ORANGE JUICE

IN LATE DECEMBER 1976, Alexander Parker, real estate magnate, gazed down upon 42nd Street and saw a world made new. A reporter for a business magazine wrote, breathlessly: “Alex Parker stands in the large, high-ceiling board room with floor-to-ceiling arched windows looking out over Times Square. He doesn’t see the prostitutes, pimps, molesters, muggers. He says he sees a huge, shining complex where tourists will flock for excitement of another kind in a revitalized Times Square.” Parker was a Times Square arriviste, a developer who owned properties in the Garment District, in the West Thirties. The year before, he had purchased 1 Times Square, the old Times Tower, the fountainhead of Times Square, from the Allied Chemical Corporation; and it was from the old boardroom of the Times that he had launched his dream of a new 42nd Street. The “huge, shining complex” was a convention center, which would stretch from 40th to 43rd Street and from Seventh to Eighth Avenue. The rendering depicted in the article has the sterile beauty of a thing imagined ex nihilo: a plaza with gardens and fountains and walkways leading to a cluster of rectangular granite slabs, which would presumably house the conventioneers. Parker said that he planned to use “a large wrecking ball . . . to crush the decaying structures” of the old 42nd Street. And in fact not only the prostitutes and muggers, but the street itself, and even the street plan, have been eradicated from the picture. This new 42nd Street bears a strong resemblance to the United Nations Plaza.

Parker’s timing wasn’t very good. By 1976, the real estate market, and New York City’s economy, had collapsed; he never managed to raise the $500 million he said he needed for the convention center. He ultimately sold the oft-sold 1 Times Square, and then disappeared from the history of Times Square and 42nd Street. But the dream, as it