Times Square is a square in New York City's Midtown Manhattan.
The intersection of Seventh Avenue, 42nd Street, and Broadway forms it.
Times Square is also known as "the World's Crossroads," "the Center of the Universe," "the Heart of the Great White Way," and "the Heart of the World."
It is one of the world's most popular tourist destinations, with an estimated 50 million visitors each year. On a daily basis, approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square, many of whom are tourists, and on busiest days, over 460,000 pedestrians walk through the area.
It is one of the busiest pedestrian areas in the world, as well as the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the global entertainment industry.
Times Square is not a square in geometric terms; it is more akin to a bowtie with two triangles. The southern triangle of Times Square is unnamed, but the northern triangle is known as Duffy Square. It was dedicated to World War I chaplain Father Francis P. Duffy of New York City's US 69th Infantry Regiment in 1937 and now serves as the site of a memorial to him.
Longacre Square had an unsavoury reputation as a centre of illicit activity in the 1890s, despite being both a commercial and a residential area earlier in the century.
The square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the Times Tower on the square (though it would outgrow them by 1913). Almost immediately, the square became a gathering place for New Yorkers to welcome the new year.
To commemorate the occasion, the Times began lowering a massive glass ball down its flagpole at midnight on New Year's Eve in 1907. As the tradition grew to include live television broadcasts that shared the experience with tens of millions of people across the United States, ever more sophisticated technology was used for the square's ball drop.
After the introduction of neon signs in the 1920s, Times Square quickly became the preeminent American venue for advances in big, bright electric signage and advertising. Starting in 1928, the Times "zipper" used 14,800 lightbulbs to create moving headlines. Among the most famous signs in the square were those depicting a massive coffee cup from which real steam rose and a cigarette-smoking man blowing steam-generated smoke rings.
With the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the general atmosphere of Times Square changed. Many popular theatres closed, and their places were taken over by saloons, brothels, "burlesque halls, vaudeville stages, and dime houses." In the decades that followed, the area developed a reputation as a dangerous and seedy neighbourhood.
From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area became an infamous symbol of the city's decline, thanks to its go-go bars, sex shops, peep shows, and adult theatres. The New York Times described 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue as "the 'worst' in town" as early as 1960.
The introduction of large tourist-friendly stores, theatres, and restaurants in the 1990s is often credited to Mayor Rudy Giuliani's advocacy and the Disney Company's investment in the area.
Attractions in Times Square include ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, and multiple multiplex movie theatres. There are also restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese restaurant, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood restaurant, Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant, and Carmine's, which serves Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media companies to locate their headquarters in the area. The increased presence of police has improved the area's safety.
Around one million revellers pack Times Square for New Year's Eve celebrations, more than doubling the area's daily visitor count. According to published reports, approximately two million people overflowed Times Square on December 31, 1999, flowing from Sixth Avenue to Eighth Avenue and back on Broadway and Seventh Avenue to 59th Street, making it the largest gathering in Times Square since August 1945 during World War II celebrations.
Times Square is an instantly recognisable location that has appeared numerous times in literature, films, video games, music videos, and television.
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