Friday, October 17, 2008
Atop the New TKTS Booth, Ruby-Red Stairs With a View of the Great White Way
NYTimes.com: "After the longest out-of-town tryout in history, a new TKTS booth opened on Thursday in Duffy Square, eight years later and nine times costlier than originally estimated."
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5 comments:
free seating is in pretty high demand in that area and i'm glad that that real estate is going to be used for multiple purposes of seating and ticket selling. on the other hand it'll just be another tourist trap sent to plague the people who just want a bench to drink their coffee on and keep getting pushed over by japanese tourists. but thats the way it is i guess.
The architectural concept is a really neat idea in such a massively crowded area, but we'll see if the stairs are actually going to be used as seating, because I imagine the tread will collect a lot of gunk very quickly. The fact that it's a public park area completely changes the area for me, and I hope it gets used effectively.
Slideshow: 4" glass load-bearing walls? That must have cost a pretty penny.
I like the idea of improving the times square area with a shiny new staircase. The stairs bring a cool architectural aspect to times square and give it one more cool new thing to do there. And I'm sure that the architectural lighting on this thing is going to be real cool. TKTS is an integral part of the times square theatre-going culture and giving it a face lift is going to do wonders for the area and give a better image to an already wonderful service.
I don't understand why $19 million was needed for this project. It seems like an exorbitant amount of money to put into a piece of architecture that, quite frankly, probably won't become the "hip place" to hang out in New York. This just seems like a strange way to spend money that could be going towards actual productions.
I think that the stairs are a really cool idea. They are very 'touristy' though. Looking at a photo of them reminded me of the 'deal or no deal' stairs. Again though - I think it's important to build up the Broadway economy even more so - but I think that these giant towering stairs send the wrong message - that it's all about what you see - glitz and glamour.
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