1st traffic light in NYC

The Fifth Avenue Association replaced them with Joseph H. Freedlander’s elegant 23-foot bronze towers, praised as civic art that cut the trip from 57th to 34th Street to just 15 minutes. But by 1929, these ornate beacons were deemed obstructions and replaced with corner-mounted bronze signals topped with statues of Mercury. The Mercuries lasted until 1964, though the original towers vanished without a trace.