Columbus Circle
Columbus Circle is a traffic circle and heavily trafficked intersection in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located at the intersection of Eighth Avenue, Broadway, Central Park South, and Central Park West, at the southwest corner of Central Park. The circle is the point from which official highway distances from New York City are measured, as well as the center of the restricted-travel area for C-2 visa holders.
The circle is named after the monument of Christopher Columbus in the center, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The name is also used for the neighborhood that surrounds the circle for a few blocks in each direction. Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is located to the southwest, and the Theater District is to the southeast and the Lincoln Square section of the Upper West Side is to the northwest.
History
The traffic circle, located at Eighth Avenue/Central Park West, Broadway, and 59th Street/Central Park South, was designed as part of Frederick Law Olmsted's 1857 vision for Central Park, which included a rotary on the southwest corner of the park. It abuts the Merchant's Gate, one of the park's eighteen major gates. Similar plazas were planned at the southeast corner of the park, the northeast corner, and the northwest corner. Clearing of the land area for the circle started in 1868. The actual circle was approved two years later. The Columbus Monument was placed at the center of the circle in 1892.Columbus Circle was originally known generically as "The Circle". An 1871 account of the park referred to the roundabout as a "grand circle". After the 1892 installation of the Columbus Column in the circle's center, it became known as "Columbus Circle", although its other names were also used through the 1900s.
By 1901, construction on the first subway line of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company required the excavation of the circle, and the column and streetcar tracks through the area were put on temporary wooden stilts. As part of the subway line's construction, the 59th Street–Columbus Circle station was built underneath the circle. During construction, traffic in the circle was so dangerous that the Municipal Art Society proposed redesigning the roundabout. By February 1904, the station underneath was largely complete, and service on the subway line began on October 27, 1904. The station only served local trains; express trains bypassed the station. The platforms of the IRT subway station were lengthened in 1957–1959, requiring further excavations around Columbus Circle. An additional subway line—the Independent Subway System 's Eighth Avenue Line, serving the present-day —was built starting in 1925. At Columbus Circle, workers had to be careful to not disrupt the existing IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line or Columbus Circle overhead. The Columbus monument was shored up during construction, and obstructions to traffic were minimized. The line, which opened in 1932, contains a 4-track, 3-platform express station at 59th Street–Columbus Circle, underneath the original IRT station. The IND station were designed as a single transit hub under Columbus Circle.
Conversion to traffic circle
In November 1904, due to the high speeds of cars passing through the circle, the New York City Police Department added tightly spaced electric lights on the inner side of the circle, surrounding the column. The circle was altered in 1905 by William Phelps Eno, a businessman who pioneered many early innovations in road safety and traffic control. In a 1920 book, Eno writes that prior to the implementation of his plan, traffic went around the circle in both directions, causing accidents almost daily. The 1905 plan, which he regarded as temporary, created a counterclockwise traffic pattern with a "safety zone" in the center of the circle for cars stopping; however, the circle was too narrow for the normal flow of traffic. Eno also wrote of a permanent plan, with the safety zones on the outside as well as clearly delineated pedestrian crossings. The redesign marked the first true one-way traffic circle to be constructed anywhere, implementing the ideas of Eugène Hénard. In this second scheme, the public space within the circle, around the monument, was almost as small as the monument's base.The rotary traffic plan was not successful. A New York Times article in June 1929 stated that the "Christopher Columbus is safe and serene, but he's the only thing in the Circle that is." At the time, there were eight entrance and exit points to Columbus Circle: two each from 59th Street/Central Park South, to the west and east; Broadway, to the northwest and southeast; Eighth Avenue/Central Park West, to the south and north; and within Central Park to the northeast. Moreover, streetcars on the former three streets did not go counterclockwise around the rotary, but rather, both tracks of all three streetcar routes went around one side of the monument, creating frequent conflicts between streetcars and automobiles using the rotary in opposite directions. The police officers patrolling the circle had to manage the 58,000 cars that entered Columbus Circle every 12 hours.
As part of a plan to reorganize traffic in the "Columbus-Central Park Zone", Eno's circular-traffic plan was abolished in November 1929, and traffic was allowed to go around the circle in both directions. Central Park West, a one-way street that formerly carried southbound traffic into the circle, was now one-way northbound. The bidirectional entrance roads into Central Park, which fed into northbound and eastbound West Drive, were both changed to one-way streets because West Drive had been changed from bidirectional to one-way southbound and eastbound. Traffic going straight through Columbus Circle was forced to go around the left side of the monument, while any traffic making turns from the circle had to go counterclockwise around the rotary using the right side.
Alterations
The bidirectional traffic pattern through Columbus Circle failed to eliminate congestion. In 1941, engineers with the New York City Parks Department and the Manhattan Borough President's office formed a tentative agreement to redesign Columbus Circle yet again. "Local" and "express" lanes would segregate north–south traffic passing within the circle. Local north–south traffic and all east–west traffic would go around the circle's perimeter in a counterclockwise direction, along a roadway. Through north–south traffic on Broadway, Eighth Avenue, and Central Park West would use two divided roadways with landscaped medians, running in chords on either side of the Columbus monument. Traffic from southbound Broadway and northbound Eighth Avenue would use the western chord, and northbound Broadway and southbound Central Park West would use the eastern chord. The center of the circle would be refurbished with a tree-lined plaza, and pedestrian traffic from the north and south would be able to pass through the center of the circle. The exit into Columbus Circle from West Drive would be eliminated, and the entrance to West Drive would be relocated. In a related development, the 59th Street trolley route's tracks would be removed. This was crucial to the reorganization of the circle, as the trolley had already been discontinued.The proposed reorganization of Columbus Circle was widely praised by civic groups and city officials. On the other hand, William Phelps Eno advocated for a return to his original 1905 proposal. However, the plan still had some issues, the largest of which was that traffic traveling on Broadway in either direction would be routed onto Eighth Avenue or Central Park West, and vice versa. The reconfiguration of the circle was deferred due to World War II. The trolley routes that ran through Columbus Circle were discontinued in 1946, but the bus routes that replaced the trolley lines took the same convoluted paths through the circle. In June 1949, it was announced that the reconstruction of Columbus Circle would finally begin. Work on removing the abandoned trolley tracks commenced in August. In conjunction with Columbus Circle's rehabilitation, the New York City Department of Transportation designed a variable traffic light system for the circle. The project was originally set to be complete by November 1949 at a cost of $100,000. However, delays arose due to the need to maintain traffic flows through the circle during construction. The project was ultimately completed that December.
The entirety of Eighth Avenue south of Columbus Circle was converted to northbound-only traffic in 1950. In 1956, in preparation for the opening of the New York Coliseum on Columbus Circle's west side, traffic on Central Park West and Broadway was rearranged. Central Park West was made northbound-only for a short segment north of the circle, and two blocks of Broadway south of the circle were converted to southbound-only. A new northbound roadway was cut through the southern tip of the center traffic island that contained the statue, from Eighth Avenue to the eastern chord. At the same time, the eastern chord was converted to northbound-only.
1990s and 2000s renovation
By the late 20th century, it was regarded as one of the most inhospitable of the city's major intersections, as the interior circle was being used for motorcycle parking, and the circle as a whole was hard for pedestrians to cross. In 1979, noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger said that the intersection was "a chaotic jumble of streets that can be crossed in about 50 different ways—all of them wrong." In 1987, the city awarded a $20 million contract to Olin Partnership and Vollmer Associates to create a new design for the circle.The circle was refurbished in 1991–1992 as part of the 500th-anniversary celebration of Columbus's arrival in the Americas. In 1998, as a result of the study, the circular-traffic plan was reinstated, with all traffic going around the circle in a counterclockwise direction. The center of the circle was planned for further renovations, with a proposed park across. The design for a full renovation of the circle was finalized in 2001. The project started in 2003, and was completed in 2005. It included a new water fountain by Water Entertainment Technologies, who also designed the Fountains of Bellagio; benches made of ipe wood; and plantings encircling the monument. The fountain, the main part of the reconstructed circle, contains 99 jets that periodically change in force and speed, with effects ranging between "swollen river, a rushing brook, a driving rain or a gentle shower". The inner circle is about, while the outer circle is around. The redesign was the recipient of the 2006 American Society of Landscape Architects' General Design Award Of Honor. In 2007 Columbus Circle was awarded the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence silver medal.