When I came across this glass plate negative, I knew it was something special. Cracked, fragile, and barely holding together, it carried an image that hadn’t been properly seen in over a century.
A beautiful night time view of Times Square, New York, captured in October 1914.
Working with broken glass plates is slow and delicate. I didn’t want to risk damaging it further, this was a rare piece of history in my hands. Carefully, I pieced the fragments back together like a puzzle, scanned each section, and began the restoration process. Removing cracks, rebuilding contrast, and bringing back the detail that time had slowly taken away until the image could be seen again as it once was.
Through the haze, Times Square emerges glowing in the night, a city alive with electric light, streetcar tracks, and movement. This photograph captures New York at a turning point, as it transformed into the modern concrete jungle we recognise today.
Only a decade earlier, this area had been renamed from Longacre Square to Times Square after The New York Times, one of America’s most influential newspapers agencies moved into its tower in 1904. By 1914, the name “Times Square” had already become permanent, even though The New York Times had moved out of its original tower a year earlier in 1913.
By this point, Times Square had firmly established itself as New York’s centre of entertainment, advertising and spectacle.
What stands out immediately is the light.
This was before neon dominated Broadway, but the city was already learning how to turn night into theatre. Electric signs cut through the mist: advertisements for Fatima Turkish Blend Cigarettes, United States Tires, and the glowing facade of the Vitagraph Theatre, one of the earliest movie palaces in New York. In 1914, the Vitagraph Theatre had just opened as a dedicated film venue, marking the rapid shift from live theatre to motion pictures.
On its marquee is The Win(k)some Widow, a silent film built around performer Cissy FitzGerald, whose signature wink became part of its identity.
Elsewhere, the photograph reveals layers of Broadway life. The vertical “Wm. Morris New York” sign points to William Morris, the influential producer and talent agent behind one of the era’s most powerful theatrical networks. Nearby, “Jardin de Danse” refers to his popular rooftop cabaret atop Hammerstein’s Victoria Theatre, a lively venue that captured the dance and nightlife culture defining Times Square at the time. It wasn’t just a street people passed through, but a place to stay, watch, and immerse themselves in the evening.
Across the scene, B. F. Keith's Palace Theatre represents the still dominant world of vaudeville, where live performance continued to draw huge crowds even as the film industry was rapidly emerging beside it.
Restoring this image wasn’t just about fixing damage.
It was about revealing something that had been hidden, a moment suspended in time, preserved on fragile glass, now brought back into view. Every detail you see here has survived for over a century. To hold this image now is to look directly into 1914, not as a distant idea, but as a real night, in a real place, captured forever in light.
