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It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent Duffy Square, Times Square is a bowtie-shaped space five blocks long between 42nd and 47th Streets.
Brightly lit by numerous billboards and advertisements, it is sometimes referred to as the Crossroads of the World, the Center of the Universe, the heart of the Great White Way, and the heart of the world. One of the world's busiest pedestrian areas, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry.
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.
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.
Times Square, specifically the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street, is also the eastern terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States.
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. 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.
More information: Times Square
Times Square is the official name of the southern triangle, below 45th Street, but the northern triangle is officially Duffy Square. It was dedicated in 1937 to World War I chaplain Father Francis P. Duffy of the 69th New York Infantry Regiment, and is the site of a memorial to him. There is also a statue of composer and entertainer George M. Cohan, and the TKTS discount ticket booth for Broadway and off-Broadway theaters.
When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th Street. These three streams formed the Great Kill, in 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 rollicking 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.
Times Square is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop. About one million revelers crowd Times Square for the New Year's Eve celebrations, more than twice the usual number of visitors the area usually receives daily. However, for the millennium celebration on December 31, 1999, published reports stated approximately two million people overflowed Times Square, 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 celebrations marking the end of World War II.
On December 31, 1907, a ball signifying New Year's Day was first dropped at Times Square, and the Square has held the main New Year's celebration in New York City ever since.
More information: The Culture Trip
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