This is the northwest corner of West 173rd Street and Broadway. The billboard advertises (and requests funds) for a new church called the Broadway Temple. This massive planned structure was the brainchild of Reverend Christian Reisner, the leader of a Washington Heights Methodist congregation. Upon learning in 1923 that their current place of worship was to be demolished for the planned George Washington Bridge, Rev. Reisner decided their next home would be a ”magnificent advertisement for God’s business.” This proposed church by architect Donn Barber was to include two 12-story apartment buildings flanking a soaring central tower, complete with a 75-foot-high rotating cross at the top. The church was to seat more than 2,000 and have a basement space with a gym, bowling alley, and pool. Needing $4 million for his church, the reverend sought funds from New York's wealthiest (John D. Rockefeller, for one) and its regular folks (the billboard urges passers-by to help out with 5% bonds). By the start of the Depression, the two Deco apartment houses had been completed, but the church itself was far from its planned 725 feet. Stalled until the 1940s because of debt, construction on the much more restrained edifice (only three stories as compared to 40) was begun again in 1947 and the temple was completed in 1952 (with no rotating cross). The final design was completed by Shreve, Harmon and Lamb, the firm that designed the Empire State Building.