Renamed from Longacre Square in April 1904 as The New York Times built its new Times Tower there, the area became home to the annual ball drop starting in 1907, after a rooftop fireworks show was stopped as a fire hazard.
Costumed characters offering photos will aggressively demand a tip afterward — agree on a price beforehand or skip the photo, and keep valuables zipped up given the dense crowds.
Before 1904 this was Longacre Square, named for the London street where carriage makers clustered, and it did much the same work here: stables, harness shops and the trades that follow horses. Adolph Ochs of The New York Times persuaded the Board of Aldermen to rename it on April 8, 1904, while his tower was still going up, and persuaded the mayor to put a subway station underneath it. The paper moved in when the building opened on January 1, 1905.
One Times Square, by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz and Andrew C. McKenzie, was built on a trapezoidal sliver barely wide enough to hold a building. Its foundation went 60 feet down to bedrock and part of the superstructure was cantilevered over the subway tunnel below. The Times outgrew it within eight years and moved to West 43rd Street in 1913. In 1965 a later owner stripped off the limestone and terracotta and wrapped the frame in 420 concrete and marble panels, which is why the tower at the square's southern point now reads as a blank stub carrying advertising.
The signage is a legal requirement rather than an accident of commerce. The special zoning district created for West Midtown in 1982, reinforced by City Planning Commission rules in 1987, obliges large developments here to carry illuminated signs meeting a minimum size and brightness. It is the one part of the city where light is mandated instead of capped, so a new tenant cannot simply hang a discreet brass plaque and be done with it.
The ground plan is recent. Broadway's traffic lanes between 42nd and 47th Streets were closed as an experiment from Memorial Day 2009; Snøhetta then made the closure permanent in custom granite pavers and long benches, finished at the end of 2016. The ball predates all of it. Rooftop fireworks ran from 1904 until they were stopped over the risk of fire, and the first ball was lowered on December 31, 1907, to bring in 1908.
Times Square, Manhattan, NY 10036 · Official site ↗
Times Square is one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, tourist destinations, and entertainment hubs. It 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 constantly brightly illuminated by numerous digital billboards and advertisements as well as businesses offering 24/7 service.
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