On the Town

Sailors find some friendly company while crossing 45th Street at 2:30 a.m. in Times Square. “In the long, lonely hours of early morning, Times Square changes,” The Times reported in August 1970. “It ceases for a while to play its practiced role as glamour girl of the Western world. Predawn visitors see it in what amounts to its cold cream and curlers.”

The reporter, McCandlish Phillips, kept a diary of one night in the crossroads of the world. Our photographer Librado Romero ventured out to capture the night in pictures. “There is a point past 3 o’clock when the loudest noise a stray visitor hears in the square is the click-click of the inner workings of a traffic signal switching lights,” McCandlish wrote. But in the earlier hours of the evening, there was plenty to see and hear. Among the characters they witnessed: two patrolmen, who had “seen it all too many times” ; a “hairy-chested” man selling costume jewelry; a bearded man playing a recorder; a “sad-faced youth with sunken cheeks, dressed all in black” ; and four hawkers selling long-stemmed flowers.

Around 2:30 a.m., a couple of sailors made an appearance: “There are flashy young women standing on most of the corners on the east side of the square,” McCandlish wrote. “Two sailors approach two of them. They stroll slowly north, talking. One of the women steps out and hails a cab. All four get in and go off.”

This photo was published in The Times with the article “Times Square’s Quiet Hours When Make-Believe Stops” on Aug. 4, 1970.