Vintage Views of the NY State Thruway From An Old Film.

[SteveG1988]

Found this by accident, some intersting views of the road from a 1960 film called butterfield 8

Edit: Fixed the link so it works, thanks for catching that guys.

[empirestate]

Now that's cool; dig the old blue signage!

Wonder if that's the (original) I-287/Elmsford interchange we're seeing at the end?

[SteveG1988]

movie came out in Nov 1960, so use that to help figure out the road config

[vdeane]

I keep getting the message "an error occurred, please try again later".  Is there another link I don't know about? 

[empirestate]

I keep getting the message "an error occurred, please try again later".  Is there another link I don't know about? 

I had to enter the url directly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH1yqy35xbk&NR=1&feature=fvwp

[NE2]

That's what happens when people don't remove the extra crap from URLs. Fixed:

Found this by accident, some intersting views of the road from a 1960 film called butterfield 8

[xcellntbuy]

Good to see the old blue Thruway signs of my childhood.  BUtterfield 8 (correctly spelled) was a 1960 Academy Award performance by Elizabeth Taylor.

There is a blend of shots of the Thruway.  I noticed the Exit 9 signs for "Route 9 Tarrytown" and the "Route 32 Saugerties."  Loved the old New York license plates of those years, same as I remember for my father's cars back in the 1960s, with "DOT blue" backgrounds (flipped to the digits/letters in 1973). 

[Big John]

Good to see the old blue Thruway signs of my childhood.  BUtterfield 8 (correctly spelled) was a 1960 Academy Award performance by Elizabeth Taylor.

In the days that they thought people couldn't remember 7-digit telephone numbers, so they replaced the first 2 digits with letters (capitalized) and then made a word by adding lower-case letters to it, so BUtterfield 8 was the prefix of 288.

[SteveG1988]

Where i used to live it was TWin oaks 3, my house had a phone # from that era. I remember looking through my grandmothers yearbook and seeing TWin oaks 3.

It is amazing to see the tappan zee bridge back when it was new.

[vdeane]

It's interesting how some things have changed so much but others have changed so little.

[ARMOURERERIC]

Histeric Ariels imagery backs up the timeframe.

[Alps]

Good to see the old blue Thruway signs of my childhood.  BUtterfield 8 (correctly spelled) was a 1960 Academy Award performance by Elizabeth Taylor.

In the days that they thought people couldn't remember 7-digit telephone numbers, so they replaced the first 2 digits with letters (capitalized) and then made a word by adding lower-case letters to it, so BUtterfield 8 was the prefix of 288.

I don't know about "they thought people couldn't remember" as much as "the first two digits will direct you to the correct phone system/operator." If you dialed 0 and asked to be connected to, say, KLondike 5-1234, the operator would switch you over to Klondike to connect you to 5-1234.

Where i used to live it was TWin oaks 3, my house had a phone # from that era. I remember looking through my grandmothers yearbook and seeing TWin oaks 3.

There is still an old fence sign near me for Troy Fence, presumably from Parsippany-Troy Hills, for a DE-4 number. Back in the days of 5-digit dialing, Parsippany was a bunch of farms, so I'm assuming that they were covered by the DEnville exchange. Once I learned about this, I started looking at other local towns like MOntclair to see which ones had their own exchanges and which ones borrowed from neighboring towns - you can tell by digitizing the first two letters of the town name and seeing if they have a large group of exchanges beginning with that.

[PHLBOS]

In several areas of Delaware County PA, there are still some business signs the list the old style phone numbers.  A couple signs for Imperial Pizza in Secane being one of them (using KI-3 instead of 543 for the office code).  I believe their pizza boxes still list the old notation.

[machias]

Now that's cool; dig the old blue signage!

Wonder if that's the (original) I-287/Elmsford interchange we're seeing at the end?

The sign definitely says "Elmsford" at 2:22.  You see it go by in the background.

[empirestate]

Now that's cool; dig the old blue signage!

Wonder if that's the (original) I-287/Elmsford interchange we're seeing at the end?

The sign definitely says "Elmsford" at 2:22.  You see it go by in the background.

I'm not seeing the "Elmsford" sign, but there are a bunch visible for "Tarrytown". Still, the three-level stack makes a pretty prominent appearance.

[_Simon]

The exchange codes had names so that people could remember them easier and because before automatic exchanges, you would tell the phone number to the cordboard operator (like CIrcle-74830).  Additionally because most interoffice routing was done on 2 digits (with the final 5 identifying the subscriber within the office), the exchange name + 5 digits had better matched the 3+4 pattern we use today.  Many exchange codes still in use today originally had an exchange name that matched the first two digits of the NXX, for example the 222 NXX of the 212 NPA was once "ACademy-2" + 4 digits.  Special operators were set up even up until the 80's to intercept people that had accidentally dialed an I as a 1 or an O as a zero.  That was because office codes beginning with 1 and 0 were used as special internal routing codes, which where eventually exploited when blue-boxing and other tool-less techniques were discovered for subscribers to be able to dial directly on trunks (the shared lines between offices).

[PHLBOS]

Note the 50-cent two-way toll for the Tappan Zee.  When did the TZ convert to a one-way toll collecting... sometime during the 70s?

[yakra]

What's that three-level lookin' overpass structure at the 3-minute mark?

[empirestate]

What's that three-level lookin' overpass structure at the 3-minute mark?

That would be the Elmsford (I-287) interchange I've been referring to. Presumably.

[yakra]

Oh yeah. I just assumed Liz had been driving NW, `cuz I'm a dummy.
Since she was on the lowest level of the interchange, looks like the took the ramp to I-287 east, and crashed at the NY119 interchange, which HistoricAerials shows as still U/C in 1960. Yeah.

[empirestate]

Oh yeah. I just assumed Liz had been driving NW, `cuz I'm a dummy.

No you're not...she definitely starts out going NW; you see her climbing uphill through the South Nyack area. Then through the magic of film she flips over to the other side of the Hudson.

[SignBridge]

Ah yes, the old blue signs that I found so puzzling as a kid, when everyplace else had green signs. (I hadn't been on the Connecticut Tpke yet)

The other notable feature of the Thruway (and many other 1950's highways) as originally built, that you can see in that video, was the lack of any effective median protection. It wouldn't be until around 1967 that steel guide-rails were installed in that narrow median after a major campaign by the media and the Auto Club of NY. There had been many fatal crossover collisions on both the T'way and the Cross Westchester Expwy.

So regrettable that so many highway agencies in New York had to be sold on the idea of spending money for this after so many people died unnecessarily. Today we take the Jersey Barriers for granted. Remember that every dent and scuff you see on those barriers represents a prevented crossover accident.

[vdeane]

We still don't use jersey barriers as extensively in NY as in other places.  There are many interstates that have simple guardrails where a jersey barrier would normally be used.  I-590 between NY 31 and I-490, I-490 between NY 31F and Bushnell's Basin, and NY 17 between Binghamton and I-84 all come to mind.

[SignBridge]

The concrete "Jersey Wall" and steel guide-rails are both generally effective at preventing cross-overs though neither is 100%.  As was explained to me by a spokesperson for New Jersey DOT a few years ago, the concrete wall works best for narrow medians and steel rails work best on wider medians. They are sometimes interchangeable. Different states have different practices. BTW vdeane, the Jersey Wall is common on Long Island. It's used on the Long Island Expwy. and some of the state parkways.

[vdeane]

It's not uncommon upstate either, there are just a lot of places where you have a narrow median with steel rails.  But in many other states, steel rail barriers in narrow medians are practically unthinkable.