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NEW YORK New York's Radio Row (1921-1966) was a warehouse district on the Lower West Side of Manhattan , New York City . Radio Row was born in 1921 with the opening of City Radio on Cortlandt Street and died in 1966 when it was torn down to make room for the World Trade Center .1 It held several blocks of electronics stores, which spread out both ways from a central axis along Cortlandt Street. The used radios, war surplus electronics (e.g. ARC-5 radios), junk and parts was piled so high that it would spill out onto the street. It was a scrounger's paradise. According to a business writer, it was also the origin of the electronic component distribution business.2, p. 167 "The electronic component distribution business started in the 1920s and 1930s, selling radio tubes on lower Manhattan's Cortland[sic] St...." '' The New York Times '' made an early reference to "Radio Row" in 1927, when Cortlandt Street celebrated a "Radio Jubilee." The ''Times'' reported that "Today... Cortlandt Street is 'Radio Row,' while Broadway is just a thoroughfare." The street was closed and decorated with flags and bunting, and the Times reported plans for New York's acting mayor Joseph V. McKee to present a "key to Cortland Street" to the then-reigning Miss New York , Frieda Louise Mierse, while a contest was held to name a "Miss Downtown Radio.""'Radio Row' Begins Its Jubilee Today," ''The New York Times,'' September 6 , 1927 , p. 34 Meyer Berger recalled that, as a child, "On Saturday mornings, I used to venture from Brooklyn with my father to Radio Row on Cortlandt Street in Lower Manhattan, where he and hundreds of other New York men moved from stall to stall in search of the elusive tube that would make the radio work again. Later, my brothers went there with him in search of television components. Radio Row was a piece of all our interior maps."3 p. 11 In 1930, the ''Times'' described Radio Row as located on Greenwich Street "where Cortlandt Street intersects it and the Ninth Avenue Elevated forms a canopy over the roadway.... The largest concentration is in the block bounded by Day Street on the north and Cortlandt on the south, but Radio Row does not stop there; it overflows around the corner, around several corners, embracing in all some five crowded blocks." It estimates 40 or 50 stores in the vicinity, "all going full blast at the same time. There may be regulations prohibiting this vociferous practice, but if the radio dealers have anything to say it about it, it will never have the slightest effect along Radio Row.... The clamor is heard even as one walks through the subway tunnel to the street exit.... The first impression, and in fact the only one, is auditory, a reverberating bedlam, a confusion of sounds which only an army of loudspeakers could produce." It notes, in addition to merchants selling radio sets, "others display mostly accessories... one shopkeeper last week featured a crystal set small enough to fit into a pocket, and another gave prominent position to a bucket of condensers about an inch in side.""Bedlam on Radio Row: Downtown Mart Continues its Musical Pandemonium, But Meantime Sells Cameras and Golf Balls." ''The New York Times'', May 25 , 1930 , p. 144 , 1944 , p. X7 Radio Row rebounded. Radio Row's destruction in 1966 was highly controversial. A 1962 WCBS Radio commentator opined: :Shaping up in New York City is a legal battle of overriding importance. Its outcome will conceivably affect us all. If the considerable power of the Port Authority is allowed to dispossess the merchants of Radio Row, then, it is our conviction, no home or business is safe from the caprice of government."Sam Slate, WCBS Radio, October 4 , 1962 , as quoted in 4 p. 62 When it was demolished, some of the junkier stock was simply carted away along with the debris from the demolished buildings. A lesser district of parts shops grew around the nearby corner of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue, selling similar junk, new parts, and obsolete equipment, but it withered in the late 20th century. BOSTON In 1923, '' The Boston Globe '' reported that a section of the North End had been dubbed "Radio Row" because of the large number of radio antennas being installed in that neighborhood. "The hurdy-gurdy has a rival," wrote the ''Globe'', and "No skyline anywhere else in the city or the suburbs is filled with so many antennae as the blocks stretching along some sections of Hanover and Salem sts. Many residents have three or four aerials—one has six—with wires leading down to receiving sets of all descriptions, in the homes of the foreign-born residents. It has all come about in a few months.... All stairways lead to the roof, where [some residents are arranging to rig up a loudspeaker, connected with instruments below. A survey of housetops... shows a whole population getting ready."Cullinan, Howell (1923), ''The Boston Globe,'' May 6 , 1923 , p. A5. SUPER BOWL "Radio Row" is also a term for the building used during Super Bowl week. This building houses national and local Radio Show s broadcasting from the Super Bowl city. SEE ALSO
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