U.S. At War: The Great White Way

One night last week Broadway and half Manhattan blacked out —from Greenwich Village to Harlem. The greatest concentration of light in all the world blinked out. Suddenly dark were the marquees and façades of Roseland, Lindy’s, the Paramount, the Astor; dark were the skyhigh signs. Out went the New York Times’s electric bulletins —as though time itself had quit on Broadway. The only light a plane could see came from a pale “bomber’s” moon, touching the skyscraper towers and silvering the rivers. Crowds in Times Square watched the phenomenon, dumbstruck. Broadway’s lights probably will not glitter brightly again until the war is over. “Dim-outs” will be the nightly rule, so that no sky-glow can limn ships at sea, betraying them to U-boats.