Broadway and 42nd Street

Hassam painted this winter evening in 1902, at the crossing of Broadway and 42nd Street. Two years later the square in front of him would be renamed Times Square, after the newspaper that put up its tower there. When he painted it, it was still called Longacre Square, and it was just becoming the bright heart of the city's nightlife. What lights the scene is new technology: the electric glow of the trolley cars and street lamps throwing warmth across the slush and the crowd. Hassam had learned his loose, flecked brushwork in Paris among the French Impressionists, and he turned it here on New York rather than a boulevard or a river. The cabs are still horse-drawn, the snow is dirty underfoot, and the whole corner shimmers in the cold.