Talk:Columbus Circle

First traffic circle in America?

Are you sure of this? Pierre L'Enfant sprinkled maybe a dozen circles into Washington DC during Jeffersonian times. If this article is correct on Columbus Circle being built in 1905 with no circle there before, something's wrong. IvyGold 02:40, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

No responses, I chopped that reference out.

Here's L'Enfant's map of DC, circa 1802:

http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/Cities/wld/05830/05830a.jpg

My bet is that traffic circles are sui generis. There's no way to determine which was the first in the USA.

IvyGold 03:35, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Point from which distances to New York are measured

Someone else marked this fact as dubious, so I decided to google for it. The best I could find was this article from Travel and Leisure. The article was written in 2004, two years before this fact was added to Wikipedia, so it's definitely an earlier source. Also, [http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=218991 this forum thread] from 2005 quotes a NY Sun article that repeats the same claim. Unfortunately, I could not find an official source. 74.108.101.101 (talk) 04:39, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Boston Post Road measured its milestones from Broadway and Wall Street, near the Federal Building. Never heard of Columbus Circle being used at a starting point. 2A00:23C3:E284:900:3097:73AC:C0A3:E3DD (talk) 06:35, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Categories

I've removed 3 categories, Category:Upper West Side, Category:Midtown Manhattan, and Category:Broadway (Manhattan), from this article because it is already redundant to Category:Columbus Circle, which encompasses all three categories. Beyond My Ken, please explain why you'd like to restore these categories. Epic Genius (talk) 01:32, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Nope, you're correct. Could you be a little clearer in your edit summary what category the cats you're removing are redundant to? Thanks. BMK (talk) 02:40, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay. Next time, I will be clearer in my edit summary. Thank you for clarifying. Epic Genius (talk) 16:30, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

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night image

Leaving this here to let others decide if it would make sense to have in the page -- it's a higher view than most and a nighttime shot, but lacks the symmetry of the existing daytime a-few-stories-up shot. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Speakers Corner

Have seen some mention of using this space for gatherings and speeches, like Marble Arch in London. Example from Damon Runyon’s 1930’s short story “Tight Shoes”:

“By and by they come to Columbus Circle, and in Columbus Circle there are many little groups of citizens, and each group is gathered around a guy standing on a box making a speech, so there are maybe ten different groups, and ten different guys making speeches, although each guy is only talking to his own group, but they are all talking at once, so they make quite a racket.

Now of course all this is a very familiar scene to anybody that ever goes through Columbus Circle in the evening, but it seems that Calvin Colby never before witnesses such a thing, as he does not visit Columbus Circle since infancy, and he is greatly astonished at what he beholds, and asks Rupert Salsinger what is the meaning of this.

Well, it seems that Rupert Salsinger knows all about the matter, and in fact it seems that Rupert Salsinger often takes part in these meetings personally when he has nothing else to do, and he explains to Calvin Colby that each of the speakers has a message of some kind to deliver to the people about one thing and another, and they are delivering them in Columbus Circle because it is a sort of public forum, and the coppers are not permitted to bother anybody with a message here, although they may run them bow-legged if they try to deliver any message anywhere else.”

Runyon did know his city, so there may be something here for the article, if we can find a source. 2A00:23C3:E284:900:3097:73AC:C0A3:E3DD (talk) 06:40, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, this tradition appears to be quite real if little-documented. I've started a section at Columbus Circle#History of soapbox orators.--Pharos (talk) 00:37, 13 June 2020 (UTC)