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The Man Who Invented Times Square
Times Square's fame owes itself to a lucky twist of urban design and a charismatic promotional genius.
Constantly heightened by the ambition of successive innovators abetted by advances in display technology, the robust energy and dynamism of the commercial culture of Times Square brought into being a singular place where advertising spectacle became entertainment, where private interests transformed an open space into an arena for visual pleasure of enduring appeal to tourists and locals alike. A charismatic promotional genius, Gude was the son of immigrant parents from Germany who started as a sign hanger and bill poster, before opening his own outdoor advertising business in 1889 to design marketing campaigns for corporate clients selling branded commodities. Gude’s truly memorable and remarkable (and expensive) spectaculars came to dominate the growing nightscape of the square: the “coyly erotic” Miss Heatherbloom (1905), the 50-foot Petticoat Girl, who struggles under an umbrella in an electric rainstorm as her dress whips up to reveal her petticoat and shapely legs; the frolicking Corticelli Kitten (1912) tangling with a spool of thread in different locations; the flowing fountains of sparkling White Rock Table Water (1915) glittering in changing pastels; and one of the square’s longest-running spectaculars, the block-long Wrigley’s Spearmint Chewing Gum sign (1917–1923) atop the Putnam Building, a six-story office building on the west side of Broadway between 43rd and 44th Streets built by the Astor Estate in 1909.
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