The glittering ball drops every December 31st, and precisely at midnight much of the western hemisphere gives a collective shout. The Times Square celebration, a New York tradition since 1904, is a time and space marker. It’s how we turn our back to the past every year and start over. The gathering place for New Year’s Eve in New York City is a place that forms an “X” where Broadway and Seventh Avenue cross each other at 42nd Street. Times Square: a square that is not square, a public space that has evoked New York for so long, for so many; and a place still at the crossroads, still re-inventing itself.
It was once a sleepy part of the northern edge of town, dotted with stables and stores to buy equipment for horses. That was one incarnation. Back then, it was known as Longacre Square, named after a similar area in London where horses were kept in the late 19th century. By the turn of the century, it was also a red light district. And then came the theaters, starting in 1895. In April 1904 the New York Times moved uptown from its old offices on Park Row; and the new IRT subway was built with a stop at 42nd Street. This stop became a junction for many of the city’s underground trains as they headed uptown. On April 8th, 1904, the mayor announced that Longacre Square was now and forever Times Square, to honor the newspaper that was now the Square’s anchor.
The legendary paper threw a New Year’s Eve party that December to celebrate, complete with fireworks (the fireworks would soon be outlawed). By 1907, the razzle-dazzle fireworks display was replaced by the ball drop, and a tradition was born.
The sleepy area soon became a raucous center for an entertainment district that had been pushed out of the old Five Points, and later, the area around 14th Street, in the early years of the new century. And soon, as the still relatively new electric lights captured the imagination of what was possible, the Great White Way was born. This was a major re-invention: light in the dark night. Day all day and night. The surrounding streets became a magnet: first for light escapist theater, then, in the aftermath of the First World War, it became the hub, and center of the golden age of Broadway. New York in the Twenties boasted at its height more than 260 productions in one year (1927-28). The headline “zipper” around the Times Building followed in 1928, with news flashing around the building in electric lights. This was still another incarnation of this ghost-filled crossing.
Many theatres closed in the depression of the thirties; and in the forties, another world war brought the USO to the area. Times Square became one of the main sites for celebrating the war’s end in 1945. We’ve all seen those images; they are seared into our collective visual memory bank.
And then came the beginning of still another era for the Square: the fifties brought a golden age of the American musical to the district, but also saw the diminishment of the theater district, with a gradual decline and transformation as the area became known for peddling flesh along with Broadway dreams.
By the early ‘70s, Times Square was a disaster, and one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in New York City. Some people are nostalgic for this time. It was a nightmare. But those voices, too — drug dealers, street hustlers, card dealers and pimps are also part of the Times Square symphony.
We all know what happened next: some call it Disneyfication. Others, the rebirth of the
heartbeat of New York. But by the early nineties, clearly change was once more on its way.
At the dawn of another new century, a little more than 100 years after the celebrations started, we see still another Times Square. NASDAQ headquarters and Reuters news service jostle for airspace with MTV’s studios, a giant Marriott Hotel complex, and a huge toy store. This was always a place of commerce, but now, quite literally, the stock market and the Naked Cowboy are both Times Square landmarks. It is a vibrant area once again. Even native New Yorkers notorious for claiming they never go to Times Square can feel the upbeat tempo in streets that are lit up and lively all day and night.
Is it an uneven truce, this connection of stocks, news, commerce, restaurants, live theaters and movies? Maybe. But then that is what New York has often been: a tapestry, not a silk scarf; cacophony, not a simple melody. But then, this is the city that has come to define and re-define what urban means. Times Square wears its many cultures out in the open, in dazzling lights. Come to the crossroads, it beckons us: there is room here for many kinds of dreams and dreamers, and the next transformation is still ahead.
