Downtown Alliance Will Honor the 2009 Yankees With Granite Sidewalk Strip in Canyon of Heroes

The Alliance for Downtown New York will commemorate today’s ticker tape parade for the New York Yankees with a black granite strip embedded in the sidewalk of Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes. The strip will honor the Yankees for winning the 2009 World Series. Today’s event is the 206th ticker tape parade in New York City’s history—and the sixth parade through the Canyon of Heroes to celebrate a Yankees World Series win.

The ticker tape tradition—a quintessential New York celebration—began in 1886 to mark the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. Ticker tape parades have since honored the likes of Winston Churchill in 1946, Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the New York Giants in 2008.

The Downtown Alliance in 2003 launched its program to commemorate the parades with a series of granite strips set in chronological order every 20 feet along the traditional parade route from Battery Park to City Hall. The strips identify each parade and cite the achievements of the honorees, a group that also includes pioneers of air and space travel, soldiers, sailors, generals, sea captains, royalty, journalists, firefighters and a prize-winning concert pianist.

As pedestrians glance down to read the names of honorees etched into the sidewalk strips, a popular history of the United States and a timeline of Lower Manhattan begins to emerge.

“Every citation for this distinctive New York honor offers a snapshot of the city once upon a time, said Elizabeth H. Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. “That the Yankees are getting their sixth ticker tape parade since 1978 tells us much about the enduring commitment of this ballclub to excellence.”

The Broadway Canyon of Heroes walk is part of the Downtown Alliance’s Streetscape Program, which redesigned the look of Downtown’s streets in accordance with a plan cited by the city's Art Commission for uniqueness and elegance.