Times Square is one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, tourist destinations, and entertainment hubs. Known for its relentless street energy, Times Square is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Together with adjacent Duffy Square, Times Square is a bowtie-shaped plaza five blocks long between 42nd and 47th Streets. As a major epicenter of the world's entertainment industry and as the physical hub of the Theater District, where most Broadway theaters are located, Times Square is brightly and incessantly illuminated by numerous digital billboards and advertisements as well as businesses offering 24/7 service.
Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated 50 million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists, while over 460,000 pedestrians walk through Times Square on its busiest days. The Times Square neighborhood takes its name after the intersection.
Formerly known as Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the then newly erected Times Building, now One Times Square. It is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop, which began on December 31, 1907, and continues to attract over a million visitors to Times Square every year, in addition to a worldwide audience of one billion or more on various digital media platforms.
Times Square, specifically the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street, is the eastern terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States for motorized vehicles. Times Square is sometimes referred to as "the Crossroads of the World", "the Center of the Universe", and "the heart of the Great White Way".
Geography
Times Square functions as a town square, but is not geometrically a square. It is closer in shape to a bowtie, with two triangles emanating roughly north and south from 45th Street, where Seventh Avenue intersects Broadway. Broadway similarly intersects other north–south avenues at Union Square, Madison Square, Herald Square, and Verdi Square, none of which are squares. The area is bounded by West 42nd Street, West 47th Street, 7th Avenue, and Broadway. Broadway runs diagonally, crossing through the horizontal and vertical street grid of Manhattan laid down by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, and that intersection creates the "bowtie" shape of Times Square.
Times Square is the official name of the southern triangle, below 45th Street. The northern triangle is officially known as Duffy Square and was dedicated in June 1939 to honor World War I chaplain Father Francis P. Duffy of the 69th New York Infantry Regiment. A statue by Charles Keck was dedicated in May 1937 as a memorial to Duffy. There is also a statue of composer and entertainer George M. Cohan, and the TKTS discount ticket booth for same-day Broadway and off-Broadway theaters that has been at the site since June 1973.
History
thumb|right|Broadway at 42nd Street in 1898
thumb|right|A crowd outside One Times Square follows the progress of the [[Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier boxing fight in 1921.]]
Early history
When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch colonists, three small streams united near what is now the intersection of 10th Avenue and 40th Street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kil). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl, and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.
Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.
By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's horse carriage industry. The locality had not previously been given a name, and city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the horse and carriage trade was centered in that city. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there. In 1910, it became the Winter Garden Theatre.
As more profitable commerce and industrialization of Lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Longacre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its increasingly prominent reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. According to Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."
1900s–1930s
In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade since it opened in November 1899. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square, and the former Horse Exchange became the Winter Garden Theatre, constructed in 1911.
The New York Times moved to more spacious offices one block west of the square in 1913 and sold the building in 1961. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.
In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway (at the southeast corner of Times Square) to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway. This was the first road across the United States, which originally ran coast to coast through 13 states to its western terminus in Lincoln Park in San Francisco.
Times Square grew dramatically after World War I. It became a cultural hub full of theaters, music halls, and upscale hotels. For example, the Wrigley Spearmint Gum sign, possibly the biggest electric sign "in the world," cost $9,000 per month to rent. Some contemporary critics, such as Thorstein Veblen and G. K. Chesterton, disliked the advertising at Times Square. Fritz Lang, after seeing Times Square in 1923, used it as inspiration for his dark industrial film Metropolis.
1930s–1950s
thumb|right|Crowds celebrating in Times Square on [[V-J Day (August 15, 1945)]]
The general atmosphere of Times Square changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s. City residents moved uptown to cheaper neighborhoods, and many popular theaters closed, replaced by saloons, brothels, "burlesque halls, vaudeville stages, and dime houses". The area acquired a reputation as a dangerous and seedy neighborhood in the following decades.
Nevertheless, Times Square continued to be the site of the annual ball drop on New Year's Eve. The ball drop was placed on hiatus for New Year's Eve in 1942 and 1943 due to lighting restrictions during World War II, replaced by a moment of silence that was observed at midnight in Times Square, accompanied by the sound of chimes played from sound trucks.
On May 8, 1945, a massive crowd celebrated Victory in Europe Day in Times Square; and on August 15, 1945, the largest crowd in the history of Times Square gathered to celebrate Victory over Japan Day, reaching an estimated two million. The victory itself was announced by a headline on the "zipper" news ticker at One Times Square, which read "OFFICIAL ***TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER ***".
1960s–1990s
Decline
From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, peep shows, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline. As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town". Later that decade, Times Square was depicted in Midnight Cowboy as gritty, depraved, and desperate. Conditions only worsened in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime in the rest of the city, with a 1981 article in Rolling Stone magazine calling 42nd Street in Times Square the "sleaziest block in America". In the mid-1980s, the area bounded by 40th and 50th Streets and Seventh and Ninth Avenues saw over 15,000 crime complaints per year. The block of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues had 2,300 crimes per year in 1984, of which 20% were felonies.
Times Square was known in the 1970s-80s as the most notorious area for prostitution. In this era, formerly elegant movie theaters began to show x-rated films, and peep shows hustlers were common. In 1984, the area was so derelict and dilapidated, that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes (equivalent to $ million in ).
1980s building boom
thumb|Times Square in 1982
In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. These included office buildings such as 1540 Broadway, 1585 Broadway, and 750 Seventh Avenue, as well as hotels such as the Macklowe Hotel, Marriott Marquis, Crowne Plaza, and DoubleTree Suites. By 1986, New York City Planning Commission (CPC) was considering enacting regulations that would have forced new buildings along Times Square to include bright signage as well as deep setbacks. The CPC adopted a planning regulation in 1987, which required large new developments in Times Square to set aside about 5 percent of their space for "entertainment uses".