STREET signs in the lobby of the TIME & LIFE Building on Manhattan's Avenue of the Americas point up the close ties Americans have with severed Berlin. They read: Platz der Luftbruecke (Airlift Place), Clayallee (named for General Lucius D. Clay), Washingtonplatz (for the first U.S. President). The signs, brought from West Berlin, point to an exhibit which opened last week in the TIME & LIFE Reception Center. Americans' heightened interest in Berlin today was evident at once in a flow of 150 to 200 persons visiting the exhibit each hour.

Designed and built in Germany for its federal government and the City of West Berlin, the exhibit was officially presented to Americans by Senator Paul Hertz, West Berlin's Economics Minister, representing Mayor Willy Brandt. The exhibit, which will be in the Reception Center until Oct. 9 and then is expected to go to other U. S. cities, brings the Soviet-created Berlin crisis into vivid and frequently dramatic close-up focus. A large turntable rotates an illuminated color map of the divided city. Animated lighting depicts its air, waterway, rail and highway routes to the free world. Large panels of photographs show facets of life in West Berlin. Motion pictures catch the excitement of recent events: the cheers of welcome to Vice President Lyndon Johnson and to U.S. troop reinforcements; the erection of sections of the 25-mile wall; the flight to the West of one East German soldier when his officers' backs were turned; the Soviet water cannons spouting at jeering West Berliners. Accompanying the display is a recorded commentary by Mayor Brandt on the history of the Berlin crisis.

In a message to TIME marking the opening of the exhibit, Mayor Brandt said: "This is a period when all eyes everywhere are turned to Berlin, because decisions are being taken there that may well affect the future of the entire world. No one would be more pleased than the Berliners themselves were their city to occupy less space in current headlines. However, it is not the fate solely of the 2.5 million inhabitants of a city that is at stake in Berlin, but rather the question of whether freedom can assert itself throughout the world."

Welcoming the exhibit, James A. Linen, President of TIME Inc., said TIME'S purpose was to add to the public consciousness of the Berlin situation. "The news has many dimensions," he said. "One dimension gives people merely facts; still another lends a feeling of immediacy in these events, a feeling of history in the making. These are the things that our magazines always strive to give their readers." By playing host to the exhibit, he pointed out, TIME hopes to add a dimension of intimacy to the Berlin story: "For many visitors--for a great many, I hope--the exhibit will furnish some additional information and some greater understanding of the vital issues at stake in this crucial outpost of freedom."

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