A Brief History of the Barnes Dance

Earlier this month, in a great piece for New York magazine about traffic and pedestrian safety, Robert Kolker mentioned that the city has only one remaining "Barnes Dance" (where Broadway meets Battery Place and State Street). The Barnes Dance, sometimes called a scramble, is an intersection where car traffic halts for a bit so pedestrians can cross in all directions — including diagonally. You've probably seen pictures of the famous one in the Shibuya part of Tokyo (via Flickr user lu_lu):

The Barnes Dance takes its name from traffic engineer Henry Barnes, who served as street commissioner for a number of major American cities in the 20th century, including Denver, Baltimore, and New York. An old New York Times profile of Barnes described him as "a tense and ever-active man possessed of a peppery temper that at times lends tartness to his tongue." In 1968 the stress got the best of him, and he died of a heart attack on the job.