Venus' Phase Naked Eye?

Yesterday (9-Dec) I went to Bryant Park (near the New York Public Library) after a ‘half-day Friday’ at the office, to spot Venus naked eye after the storm. Blue skies predominated.

I've kept notes on the location of various azimuths from my personal Uraniborg around the Bryant Park lawn so I knew approximately where to look for the planet. After searching for about a minute I spotted Venus fairly easily. Easier than usual for some reason. It was steadily seen and easily recovered when I looked back after taking notes.

The planet was spotted as it was southing (crossing the meridian) so it was considerably higher than the Sun.

Details from Planetarium for the Palm

I remember reading about spotting the crescent naked eye only after viewing the planet. All I remember when viewing Venus was that it appeared starlike.

Below are a few articles from ‘The NASA Astrophysics Data System’ on seeing the phase of Venus naked eye. These appear to be some of the first published reports of sighting the crescent naked eye.

One of the articles mentions that when Venus is 40 arc seconds it is equivalent to seeing a 1" object approximately 430 feet away. If you've seen this could you let us know when this happened and the circumstances surrounding the sighting?

‘Is the Crescent Form of Venus Visible to the Naked Eye?’ by Campbell, W. W. (Apr./1916)
• View GIF
Publ. of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 28, No. 163, p.86

‘Notes & Queries: Phase of Venus seen w/the Naked Eye’ by Chant, C. A. (Jan./1929)
• View PDF, View GIF
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 23, p.48

‘Notes & Queries: Crescent Venus seen w/the Naked Eye’ by Chant, C. A. (Mar./1929)
• View PDF, View GIF
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 23, p.144

‘Notes & Queries: Venus as a Crescent w/the Naked Eye’ by Chant, C. A. (Jan./1935)
• Scroll to page 31 - View PDF, View GIF
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 29, p.30

Some other references to phase sightings of Venus naked eye:

‘Inferential Evidence for the Pre-telescopic Sighting of the Crescent Venus’ by David Lance Goines
(Berkeley, California, 1992; version of Oct. 18, 1995)
• http://www.goines.net/Writing/venus.html

‘Naked-eye detection of the phase of Venus’
By Jay Reynolds Freeman (28 May 1996)
• http://observers.org/reports/96.05.28.html

• Wikipedia - Phases of Venus

Image from ‘New York Public Library: N.Y. Architecture Images - Midtown’