Millennial Horn from Times Square

Millenial Horn, tin, or metal alloy, painted red with white polka-dots in a festive, encheering pattern. "Made in U.S.A." printed within pattern. Flattened and deeply abraded condition. Collected at intersection of West 42nd St. and Avenue of the Americas. 2 January, 2000, c.e.

Loan Collection of Sherwin Bentley Harris III, Mount Vernon, New York.

re.000.0000.ny, former catalog no.0001021 from the Harris collection. 

The time and place of collection, as well as the horn's condition, indicate that its use or uses certainly included sounding at the moment popularly believed to have been the turning of the millenium, in or near New York City's Times Square.

Comment: If this horn was sounded at midnight on New Year's Eve, it must at that time have been in usable condition, e.g., fully rounded and not yet flattened. Less than 48 hours later, it was as you see it now—flattened and deeply abraded. It can safely be assumed this damage is the result of having been run over by motor cars in the unceasing stream of traffic so characteristic of Manhattan Island—perhaps after being discarded unthinkingly or drunkenly by the very reveler who had, moments before, sounded the horn in excitement. A thought-provoking example, it is to be hoped, of time's indifference to all attempts to mark or note its passage, and also of the rapidity with which the greatest joy can be crushed.