Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Canyon of Heroes: Parades on Broadway in Lower Manhattan

At the bottom of Manhattan, where Broadway starts, is the "Canyon of Heroes" where they throw the tickertape parades. The New York Giants just had the most recent parade thrown for them after winning the Super Bowl, and hundreds of thousands of New York faithful were out there, either taking the day off from work to drive into the city, or just wandering down during their lunch hour to see the goings-on.

The parade route generally runs from the north side of Bowling Green Park and goes up Broadway to just south of City Hall Park.

There haven't been a lot of reasons to throw tickertape parades recently. And mostly the parades seem to be only for New York sports teams these days (and of course we know what's happened to the Yankees the last few years!).

But New Yorkers received an unexpected treat when the the Giants won the 2008 Super Bowl.

However, in the early and mid-20th century, tickertape parades were thrown for generals, political figures and non-sports heroes. There wasn't always so much of a focus on athletes and sports teams. If you walk up and down Broadway, you'll see, in the sidewalks along the path of the parade route, the names of tickertape parade "recipients" like Harry Truman, Charles Lindberg, the Apollo astronauts, John Glenn, Amelia Earhart, Dwight Eisenhower and so on.

Not that any native New Yorkers will take the time to notice them while they're hurrying off to work.


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