Ticker Tape in the Canyon of Heroes

NEW YORK CITY-Tucked away on Washington Street, just off Rector near the southern tip of Lower Manhattan, sits a small unmarked garage. Inside, several pickup trucks, a large pile of compressed white recycled paper and several men wearing Downtown Alliance emblazoned shirts or jackets bundle up the paper into clear plastic bags. The paper strips, brought to the garage several days ago, would have been taken away by its producer later Thursday afternoon, had the New York Yankees not won the 2009 World Series the night before.

Up and down Broadway, potholes are being patched, security tightened and there’s a sense of impending crowds as TV crews mark their turf. Around two million people are expected to show up for Friday’s Yankees ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes. The show begins at 11 a.m. on Broadway at Battery Place and will snake up to City Hall, where the newly reelected mayor will give the team a key to the city. Even the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is getting ready, adding extra PATH trains to the World Trade Center station between the morning and afternoon peak hours.

But before all that can happen, the paper in the garage downtown was scheduled to be delivered at 4:30 a.m. Friday to 20 different buildings along Lower Broadway for the city’s 206th ticker tape parade. City Hall plays host to these events, handling the logistics and security on the ground, but it’s the Alliance for Downtown New York, the area’s Business Improvement District group, that secures much of the recycled paper, according to a spokesperson at the Mayor’s office. But, it wasn’t always recycled paper or the nation’s largest BID taking charge and setting the tone.

“Early ticker tape parades are shrouded in a little bit of mystery vis-a-vis the ways they were organized,” says historian James Nevius, author of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City . He tells GlobeSt.com that it appears to have been in 1899, when Admiral Dewey was honored with a parade, that city government even took charge of the special events.

The Downtown Alliance makes the point that the paper it’s carting to the towers is recycled. But, according to Nevius, in the old days, ticker tape was ubiquitous and probably lying around the office. “Almost all buildings lining the Canyon of Heroes would have had at least one ticker tape machine,” he tells GlobeSt.com, adding that “since the ticker tape piled up, day after day, they probably only had to stockpile for a few days before a parade to have plenty to toss out as confetti.”