Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City

Times Square is at Midtown Manhattan, New York City, formed by the intersection of Seventh Avenue, 42nd Street, and Broadway. Times Square is also the centre of the Theatre District, which is bounded roughly by Sixth and Eighth avenues to the east and west, respectively, and by 40th and 53rd streets to the south and north, respectively.

Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment center, and neighborhood in the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. Brightly lit by numerous billboards and advertisements, it stretches from West 42nd to West 47th Streets, and 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 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. 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.

The southern triangle of Times Square has no specific name,but the northern triangle is officially Duffy Square. It was dedicated in 1937 to World War I chaplain Father Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th 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 ticket booth for 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" (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 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue and back on Broadway and Seventh Avenues 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. On that night, hundreds of thousands of people congregate to watch the Waterford Crystal ball being lowered on a pole atop the building, marking the start of the new year. It replaced a lavish fireworks display from the top of the building that was held from 1904 to 1906 but stopped by city officials because of the danger of fire. Beginning in 1908, and for more than eighty years thereafter, Times Square sign maker Artkraft Strauss was responsible for the ball-lowering. During World War II, a minute of silence, followed by a recording of church bells pealing, replaced the ball drop because of wartime blackout restrictions. Today, Countdown Entertainment and One Times Square handle the New Year's Eve event in conjunction with the Times Square Alliance.

A new energy-efficient LED ball debuted for the arrival of 2008, which was the centennial of the Times Square ball drop. The 2008–09 ball is larger and has become a permanent installation as a year-round attraction, being used for celebrations on days such as Valentine's Day and Halloween.

The New York City Department of Sanitation estimated that by 8 a.m. on New Year's Day 2014, it had cleared over 50 tons of refuse from the New Year's celebration, using 190 workers from their crews and the Times Square Alliance.

An immediately recognizable location, Times Square has been featured countless times in literature, films, video games, music videos, and on television.

The seediness of the area was featured prominently in such films as Midnight Cowboy(1969), Born to Win (1971), and Taxi Driver (1976). The area was shown in the 1980 film Times Square, which featured a punk rock/new wave soundtrack. It was also depicted in the 2011 movie New Year's Eve. The area also appeared on The Amazing Race as the starting location in a race around the world in the first episode of the show's 25th season, as well as on the sixth season of the Israeli edition of The Amazing Race with teams finishing their second leg in Times Square.

Times Square has been fictionally attacked and destroyed in several movies, including Knowing, when a solar flare destroys New York City; Deep Impact, when a tsunami created from a meteor impact destroys New York City; the 1998 film Godzilla, where Godzilla is chased through the square; the Ghostbusters movies; Stephen King's The Stand, where the intersection is overcome by total anarchy; and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It was also seen in the festival battle scene in the 2002 film Spider-Man, and a stand-off in the later film The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Films and TV shows have also employed the opposite tactic, depicting the typically bustling area as eerily still, such as in Vanilla Sky, as well as the post-apocalyptic I Am Legend, in which Will Smith and his dog go hunting for deer in the deserted urban canyon. In the pilot episode of the TV series Blindspot, Times Square is completely emptied due to an abandoned bag being suspected to be a bomb.

Times Square also has featured prominently in video games. For instance, in Grand Theft Auto IV, a recreation of the Times Square area referred to in-game as "Star Junction", is included in the game's fictional "Liberty City" setting.Times Square is also shown in Battlefield 3, where the final fight with the main antagonist takes place, where the player must stop him from detonating a nuclear bomb in the square; and Crysis 2, in which player must fight off attacking alien forces to assist U.S. Marines in evacuating the area.

Times Square is the most visited place globally with 360,000 pedestrian visitors a day, amounting to over 131 million a year. As of 2013, it had a greater attendance than do each of the Disney theme parks worldwide, with 128,794,000 visitors between March 2012 and February 2013, versus 126,479,000 for the Walt Disney World theme parks in Bay Lake, Florida, in 2012.

Even excluding residents from the visitor count, Times Square is the world's second most visited tourist attraction, behind the Las Vegas Strip. The high level of pedestrian traffic has resulted in $4.8 billion in annual retail, entertainment, and hotel sales, with 22 cents out of every dollar spent by visitors in New York City being spent within Times Square.

 

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