Above is a ninety minute feature film made in 1920 called ‘The Flapper’, starring the then sensationally popular actress Olive Thomas. I can’t imagine anyone is actually going to watch the whole movie (I certainly didn’t) so why am I posting it? The film was shot on location in New York City and, in a fit of Cinema Verite, the filmmakers decided to shoot a scene in crowded midtown Manhattan. Skip ahead to 51 minutes and 20 seconds and you’ll find yourself on the top of a double decker bus–these were the regular Fifth Avenue buses of the era. You get some nice second floor views of the city but the big stuff arrives at 52 minutes and 30 seconds. This is a wide shot of the intersection of Fifth and 42nd street. There are Model T’s galore, a crosstown trolley and thick pedestrian traffic, all co-existing without the aid of traffic lanes or stop lights. Except–wait! What is this we see at 52 minutes and 42 seconds? Why it’s the first of New York City’s attempts to control traffic with a light. It’s the tower seen in the middle of the block–a bronze traffic signal tower. According to a New York Times article on the history of New York City traffic lights:

There had been an experimental traffic light in 1917, but it was short-lived. Thus it was in 1920 that the first permanent traffic lights in New York went up, the gift of Dr. John A. Harriss, a millionaire physician fascinated by street conditions. His design was a homely wooden shed on a latticework of steel, from which a police officer changed signals, allowing one to two minutes for each direction. Although the meanings we attach to red and green now seem like the natural order of things, in 1920 green meant Fifth Avenue traffic was to stop so crosstown traffic could proceed; white meant go. Most crosstown streets and Fifth Avenue were still two-way.

The doctor’s signals were so well received that in 1922 the Fifth Avenue Association gave the city, at a cost of $126,000, a new set of signals, seven ornate bronze 23-foot-high towers placed at intersections along Fifth from 14th to 57th Streets. Designed by Joseph H. Freedlander, they were the most elegant street furniture the city has ever had. It was a time when elevating public taste through civic beauty was considered a fit goal for government effort. In 1923 the magazine Architecture opined that “To understand the beautiful is to create a love for the beautiful, to widen the boundaries of human pride, enjoyment and accomplishment.”