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At long last Macy’s reroutes Thanksgiving Day Parade...again
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Back in May, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg converted sections of Broadway around Times Square and Herald Square into pedestrian malls. The urban planning scheme was to relieve traffic congestion, but it also derailed a time-honored New York City tradition. On the last Thursday in November, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will take an alternate route.
Thanksgiving parade bypasses Broadway
As far back as most people can remember, the Macy’s Parade has descended south from 77th Street along Central Park West to Columbus Circle, where it then continued down Broadway to end at Macy’s Department Store on 34th Street across the street from Herald Square. But that’s no more.
Effectively, this year’s parade will bypass Broadway between 59th Street and 34th Street.
The new parade route will still head down Central Park West to Columbus Circle, but will instead head one block east along Central Park South (West 59th Street) to Seventh Avenue. The parade will go down Seventh Avenue to 42nd Street, then turn one block east again to Sixth Avenue, then continue down to 34th Street, where, now on the opposite side of Herald Square, it will turn west again to end back on Seventh Avenue in front of Macy’s store.
Not the first change of route
“The current re-route is the third major route of the parade,” says Robert M. Grippo, an independent researcher and co-author (with Christopher Hoskins) of the book, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which chronicles the parade’s history with archival images.
“The first route started at 145th Street and Convent Avenue,” Grippo says. “Within a short period of time the starting point was moved to 110th Street, then to 106th Street.” Even given the slight shrinkage, the start of the parade remained for nearly two decades around the same general uptown area and followed the same basic path.
The original Thanksgiving Day pageant in 1924—which was called the Macy’s Christmas Parade—had coincided with the expansion of Macy’s department store on West 34th Street at Herald Square. Advertisements and news coverage show that the event assembled at what might seem a peculiar distance from Macy’s store, some five-and-a-half miles farther uptown in Harlem. Grippo says he hasn’t found any notes yet to explain why.
The ever-growing parade continued to kick off way uptown through the 1920s and 1930s and into 1941. Then the festivities vanished as the country became preoccupied with World War II. “Remember, the parade didn’t march in ‘42, ‘43 and ’44, but comes back in ’45,” Grippo says. The parade’s post-war return was the advent of its first major change of route.
Miracle on 34th Street codifies second major parade route
“In ‘46, the route is changed,” Grippo points out. “If you look at the ad from the 1946 parade, there’s this little inky-dinky lettering on top that says, ‘at the request of the police department, the parade will start on 77th Street.’” He’s still hoping some record will turn up to reveal why the change was made.
Grippo finds this year’s route change interesting inasmuch as it brings the historic media and cinema focus of the parade back to 34th Street. He cites a scene in the classic 1947 movie, “Miracle on 34th Street”, where the actor Edmund Gwenn, as Kris Kringle, is on top of the store’s 34th Street awning. “The Broadway side became the focus of tv coverage later on because it photographs better,” he says. “It was more outstanding on camera.”
This year camera crews may well have to forego that photogenic preference. The detour created by Mayor Bloomberg’s new pedestrian mall along Broadway will shift the usual vantage point literally as a matter of course.
But what might appear to fly in the face of tradition may also be a small reminder that the famous Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Thanksgiving Day holiday itself share a long history of fluctuations and modifications.
Until 1863, when a series of editorials by Sarah Joseph Hale persuaded a notable proclamation of a national Thanksgiving day by President Lincoln, the month and date of holiday observances varied idiosyncratically from state to state.
Prevailing tradition
Ultimately, New Yorkers will celebrate as they have done every year. Whether it’s to bundle up the kids to head out to the new parade route, or to trundle out of bed to click on the television remote, people will tune in to the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving Day morning as usual.
For his part, Grippo says he’d have preferred leaving the route along Broadway as before, but he concedes an interesting, if perhaps unintended, aspect to this year’s change. “The cameras are going to be on 34th Street,” he points out. “It’s going to be there where everything is focused. So in reality, the switch is taking it back to its original history.”
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