The Mysterious Traffic Light of Madison Avenue
Traffic is heading uptown. So why is the signal facing downtown?
There are many mysteries in the city of New York. This one puzzled me for weeks, until its secret was revealed.
I work in an office building in midtown and pass by this corner every day. Eventually I noticed this traffic signal at 51st and Madison. It was facing the complete wrong direction—as if to guide people downtown, when Madison traffic goes uptown. Made no sense, and after living and working in New York for decades, I’d never seen anything like it.
What possible reason could there be for this? Maybe some of you have already figured it out, but I couldn’t.
I thought it might be related to its proximity to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. St. Pats’s office entrance is along Madison Avenue—once I saw a luggage-carrying cleric getting into a limo there. Could the light have something to do with closing off that stretch of Madison when the Cathedral required it? Perhaps for visiting dignitaries?
Since I had never seen such a light before, and it was located right there by the Cathedral, I figured it wasn’t a coincidence. There had to be some connection.
Or, was it construction related? There is a ton of new construction on that stretch of Madison. Huge new office buildings going up. Maybe late at night they needed to shut Madison down for cranes to come through and the signal was put there to guide their journey.
Was it a first step in reversing the direction of Madison Avenue? Ha-ha. Never.
I was stymied, and vowed to ask the next police officer I saw if she knew the answer.
But before I could do that, the mystery was solved. One day, the traffic light was gone, seemingly removed. But it wasn’t, really.
It had been swung clockwise back into its correct position, facing west-traveling traffic on 51st Street. It’s on a hinge, apparently, and had been moved into the incorrect position I had encountered. How? Why? No idea. But now traffic crossing Madison could do so more safely. There were already additional lights there, so it wasn’t the only one drivers had to rely on.
A rather pedestrian solution to the traffic signal mystery.
I suspect many of the mysteries we face have similar uncomplicated solutions. We’re a country awash in “Unsolved Mysteries” and conspiracy theories. The truth may indeed be “out there,” as they famously said on The X-Files, but it’s probably a simple one.
