The original namesake has long since moved on, but the world-famous name remains. At the beginning of the 20th century, the New York Times built a high-rise on 42nd Street in Manhattan, between 7th Avenue and Broadway. Exactly 120 years ago on Monday (April 8), then-Mayor George McClellan signed a resolution that officially renamed the long triangular intersection north of the building “Times Square.” “Times Square is the name of the new center of the city,” was the headline of the eponymous daily newspaper the next morning.
The square was previously called Long Acre Square, after a former carriage district in London, as horses and carriages were once housed around today’s Times Square. But no one really hung on to that name, and with the arrival of more and more cars and skyscrapers like the New York Times, the new name seemed more contemporary. However, the daily newspaper itself moved further to the west of Manhattan in 1913 and sold the “One Times Square” tower in 1961.
Hundreds of thousands cross Times Square every day
The tower remains the symbol of the square, which has long since become one of the most famous sights in the metropolis. The building – which has been almost completely empty for many years, is being renovated and, according to current plans, could be turned into a museum with a viewing platform – is now surrounded by news ticker tape and huge colorful advertising screens, like many other houses around the square. This is one of the reasons why it is always almost as bright as day and the radiance can be seen even from a distance.
According to the Times Square Alliance neighborhood association, almost 400,000 people now walk across the “crossroads of the world” around the clock every day. There are around three times as many every year on New Year’s Eve, when the new year is ushered in on the square with confetti and the songs “Auld Lang Syne” and “New York, New York”. The eyes of millions of people – on the square itself and on screens around the world – are then focused on the top of “One Times Square”, where a glowing crystal ball traditionally slides down a flagpole for the so-called “ball drop”.
But it’s not just on New Year’s Eve, there’s always a program in Times Square. A few years after the renaming, the area around the long Broadway transport hub, where around half a dozen subway lines intersect, was transformed into a theater district and is still the center of the scene in New York today. But the area around it fell into disrepair for decades and became a magnet for drugs, crime, porn cinemas, sex shops and prostitutes.
Between “Chicago”, “Hamilton” and “The Lion King”
In the 1980s, the city administration decided to take action against it. There was a tidying up, cleaning and renovation around Times Square. The square itself is now largely a pedestrian zone. This helped the Broadway theater scene to boom, successful plays like “The Lion King” or “Hamilton” attract thousands of people every evening, and there are also shops, hotels, restaurants, bars and an entire Broadway museum. Street artists, mostly dressed as cartoon characters or a now famous man wearing only underpants, a cowboy hat and a guitar, entertain the many tourists in return for donations.
Times Square was only really quiet, almost eerie, in the first few months of the corona pandemic. At that time, a very special work of art could be clearly heard for the first time: the sound installation “Times Square” by the US artist Max Neuhaus, who died in 2009, in which the sounds of bells emerge from a floor grid – without any explanatory sign.
“We want Times Square to be a space that captures and celebrates our culture in every way,” says the neighborhood association Times Square Alliance. “We want it to be a vibrant and democratic public space that exemplifies the civic, cultural and commercial life of our city. We want it to be a place by and for New Yorkers that we proudly share with the rest of the world .” That’s why, in addition to the big New Year’s Eve party, the association organizes art events, weddings and engagements on Valentine’s Day and mass yoga classes in the middle of the square every June on the occasion of World Yoga Day.
For many New Yorkers, however, the square has become a tourist trap. Although many people have to use the crowded traffic junction frequently, for example on the way to work or to the theater, only very few people really enjoy and do so voluntarily. A city magazine advised that you were only “there for research purposes,” you should whisper and then quickly disappear again if you were in Times Square and happened to meet someone you knew there. Some even wish for the time back before the square was clean and traffic-calmed, like the famously critical author Fran Lebowitz: “Times Square is now the worst area in the world.”