Walking on 99 Church Street, NYC, where Four Seasons hotel tower is being built in lower Manhattan you will meet walking-men.com by Maya Barkai - showcases the many variations of the international “walk” symbol found on traffic signals around the globe. The life-size icons provide a fascinating look at how different cultures come up with a simple sign that is understood all over the world. We’re charmed to learn that in Dresden the “little man” is actually a little girl, and in Tokyo it’s of a gentleman with a top hat.

The artist first got the idea when she moved from Israel to the U.S., and realized that pedestrian traffic lights varied from country to country. “I kept on taking those pictures wherever I went,” Barkai says. “Once I started accumulating them, I decided that this really had potential.” She launched a web site to help generate more images, walking-men.com, and appealed to colleagues and friends to submit photos during their travels.

To learn more on the project, visit downtownny.com/reconstruction.

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