Canyon of Heroines

If you live or work in Lower Manhattan, prepare to adjust your schedule this morning, when the United States Women’s National Soccer Team will be honored with a ticker tape parade through Broadway’s “Canyon of Heroes,” in observance of their World Cup victory last Sunday.

First, the logistics.

Several streets in Battery Park City will be used to stage floats and buses, which means that South End Avenue and Battery Place will be closed to traffic this morning, with all parking spaces along those streets (and many on nearby streets) commandeered for parade vehicles and police cars.

The parade itself will begin at West Street and Battery Place at 9:30 am, proceeding along Battery Place toward Bowling Green, then turning northbound on Broadway and finishing at City Hall, where a ceremony honoring the athletes will begin around 10:30 am. Additional festivities are likely to continue through approximately 1:30 pm.

The Police Department will begin street closings along this route (and the surrounding area) at approximately 5:00 am. Even the handful of spaces where it is legal to park along this route and in the staging area will be off limits to parking from early Wednesday morning. Cars parked in these areas will be towed and relocated, but (in most cases) will not be ticketed. (Call 311 for more information if your car goes missing.)

Pedestrians will be able to cross Broadway at the following locations: Exchange Alley, Cedar Street, Cortland Street, Vesey Street, Chambers Street, and Reade Street. (The Police Department cautions, however, that each of these crossing points will be subject to periodic closure.)

The R and W trains will bypass the City Hall subway station for the duration of the event. Other stations, such as the Wall Street stop on the 4 and 5 lines, are likely to experience intermittent closures. Multiple entrances or exits at the Fulton Center (on the A, C, 2, 3, 4, and 5 lines), the World Trade Center station (on the E line) and the Chambers Street station (on the A and C lines) may be closed, although the stations themselves are scheduled to remain open. The Downtown Alliance Connection shuttle bus is being cancelled for the day. Multiple MTA bus lines in Lower Manhattan will be rerouted or stopped entirely for the duration of the event.

Second, the backstory.

There have been 206 ticker tape parades up Broadway since the first in October, 1886, to celebrate the Statue of Liberty’s dedication. (That one was spontaneous, but all the others have been planned in advance.)

The most recent ticker tape parade was in 2015 — also honoring the Women’s National Soccer Team for their World Cup win in that year.

Before that, it had been 31 years since a group of athletes that was even included women were given this recognition: the 1984 parade, celebrating America’s Olympic gold medalists, showered confetti on gymnast Mary Lou Retton and the entire women’s basketball team, among more than a dozen men. On a quartet of other occasions, individual female athletes didn’t have to share the spotlight: In 1960, Olympic figure skating gold medalist Carol Heiss got her own ticker tape parade, as did Althea Gibson, winner of the Wimbledon women’s singles championship, in 1957.

And in 1926, Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, got her own parade. She was followed a month later by Amelia Gade Corson, the second woman (and first mother) to swim from France to England. But the last time a group of women got a parade of their own was in 1951, when Women of the Armed Forces were celebrated.