Photo Credit: Roving Rube. Viewpoint: 42nd St. and 6th Ave., looking Northwest; 2/11/02 4:45 PM.

Notes (Roving Rube): They shut this clock off on September 9, 2000, the Rube has just learned.

It had kept track of our mounting national debt (and "your family share" thereof) throughout the nineties, creating generalized anxiety in all who beheld it.

However, in the days of the budget surplus it started running backwards, created confusion and perhaps complacency amongst onlookers, prompting the clock's owner, real estate developer Douglas Durst (the clock is legacy of his father, Seymour), to turn it off, but keeping it in place should it be needed again.

The time has come, according to the DailyRepublican.com, which has its own Internet version of the clock.

The In Context view shows the entire site, across from Bryant Park on 6th Ave. and 42nd street, which has been in limbo for the past 10 to 20 years because of a battle between the Dursts and several rival developers/holdouts, the main one being Mitchel Maidman, owned the building which is now shrouded in black at the left of this view.

Accounts of this epic feud and its settlement in the aftermath of September 11th can be found at WiredNewYork.com (which posts a digest of real estate news from various sources, in this case the Daily News) and from the Observer.com.

As a result of the settlement, the black-shrouded skyscraper is getting demolished, and the Alternate View is the Rube's makeshift memorial to it -- he liked that it was only three windows wide despite being 23 stories tall, the use of brick to decorate the side, and its juxtaposition with a similar building across the street (at far left in this view). He always thought it would be a really neat place to have an apartment, and found out in this other Observer story that as recently as last summer Mr. Maidman were considering renovating the building, and charging charging from $700,000 for studio (there would be 2 per floor) and $8 million for the triplex penthouse on top.