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HERALD SQUARE, at the intersection of Broadway and Sixth avenue, Thirty-third and Thirty-sixth streets, takes its name from the Herald Building, which is its most beautiful architectural adornment. It was formerly called Greeley Square, after Horace Greeley, whose statue is here; there is also a statue of William E. Dodge, a New York merchant. The terminal of the Pennsylvania Railroad occupies four blocks between Seventh and Ninth avenues, one block west from Herald Square. The small plot of ground on the corner of Thirty-fourth street, making a jog in the Macy building, has an interesting history. The plot contains only 1,154 square feet. The Macys wanted it, to complete their site, but refused to pay the price demanded.
The HERALD BUILDING.—In Herald Square at West Thirty-fifth street and the intersection of Broadway and Sixth avenue, the New York Herald occupies a building which is one of the architectural adornments of the city. The style is of the early Italian Renaissance, the exterior is profusely covered with decoration most delicate in design, and among the conspicuous features are the unbroken roof and the colonnades of the first story. The purpose of the colonnades is to give public view of the Herald printing, and we shall find here one of the interesting sights of New York. On the Sixth avenue side may be seen the process of preparing the plates for the press. In brief, it is this: When the flat form of type making a page is received from the composing room upstairs, a papier-mache mold is made of it. The paper mold, bent to the shape of a half-cylinder, forms a matrix, in which is cast the printing plate of type-metal, curved to the proper shape to fit the cylinders of the press. From the Broadway colonnade we may see the printing plates fastened on to the press cylinders, and the presses in operation. The paper is fed from rolls into one end of the press, and comes out at the other end printed, pasted, cut, folded and counted. The largest press has a capacity of 5,000 four-page papers per minute, 300,000 per hour; or 2,500 eight-page papers per minute or 150,000 per hour. When we have watched the Herald presses we have seen one of the mechanical marvels of the age.
TIMES SQUARE, at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh avenue, from Forty-second street to Forty-seventh street, takes its name from the twenty-five-story building of the New York Times, which dominates the district and is one of the most conspicuous architectural monuments of the town. Times Square is a center of great hotels and amusement places. On the corner of Forty-second street is the fourteen-story Hotel Knickerbocker, built by Colonel John Jacob Astor; and two blocks above on the west side is the Hotel Astor, owned by William Waldorf Astor. West on Forty-second street is the monumental Candler Building.
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