This year, Times Square celebrates its 120th year since it got its name ... and it has become more unpopular with locals than ever. — Pexels
This New York square’s actual namesake has long since moved on, but the world-famous name – Times Square – remains.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the New York Times built a skyscraper on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York in the United States, between 7th Avenue and Broadway.
On April 8, 120 years ago, then Mayor George McClellan signed a resolution officially renaming the elongated triangular intersection to the north of the building “Times Square”.
“Times Square is the Name of the City’s New Centre”, read the headline of the eponymous daily newspaper the next morning.
Before then, because horses and carriages were once also kept around today’s Times Square, the area had been named Long Acre Square, after a former carriage neighbourhood in London.
But nobody was really attached to this name and with the arrival of more and more cars and skyscrapers such as the New York Times building, the new name seemed more in keeping with the times.
But in 1913 the daily newspaper itself moved further west into Manhattan and sold the One Times Square tower in 1961.
The tower remains the landmark of the square, which has long since become one of the most famous sights in the city.
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 tickers and huge colourful advertising screens, as are many other buildings around the square.
This is one of the reasons why it is always almost as bright as day and the glow can be seen from afar.
According to counts by the Times Square Alliance neighbourhood association, almost 400,000 people now pass the so-called “Crossroads Of The World” every day around the clock.
There are around three times as many each year on New Year’s Eve, when the square is filled with confetti and people singing Auld Lang Syne and New York, New York to usher in the New Year.
The eyes of millions of people – in the square itself and on screens around the world – are then fixed on the top of One Times Square, where a glowing crystal ball traditionally slides down a flagpole for the so-called “ball drop”.
The 1980s
But Times Square always has things going on – not just on New Year’s Eve. A few years after the renaming, the area around the long Broadway intersection, where around half a dozen underground lines cross, was transformed into a theatre district and is still the centre of the New York scene today.
For decades, however, the square around it fell into disrepair, becoming associated with drugs, crime, porn cinemas, sex shops and prostitution.
In the 1980s, the city council decided to take action against this. The area around Times Square was tidied up, cleaned up and renovated. The square itself is now largely a pedestrian zone.
This has helped the Broadway theatre scene to boom, with successful plays such as The Lion King and Hamilton attracting thousands of people every evening, as well as shops, hotels, restaurants, bars and an entire Broadway museum.
Tourists come to take selfies with famous street performers, like the guitarist dressed only in a cowboy hat and under-wear.
In recent decades, Times Square has only ever been really quiet, and eerily so, during the first few months of the corona- virus pandemic.
It was then that a very special work of art could be heard for the first time: The sound installation Times Square by US artist Max Neuhaus, who died in 2009, in which bell sounds emanate from a floor grid – without any explanatory signage.
Cleaner image
“We want Times Square to be a hub that captures and celebrates our culture, in every sense of that word,” says the Times Square Alliance neighbourhood association.
“We want it to be a vibrant and democratic public space that exemplifies the civic, cultural and commercial life of our city, and of all great urban places. “We want it to be a place by, of and for New Yorkers, that we can then share proudly with the rest of the world.”
That’s why, in addition to the big New Year’s Eve party, the association organises arts events, weddings, engagements on Valentine’s Day and even mass yoga classes in the middle of the square to mark World Yoga Day in June.
For many New Yorkers, however, the square has become a tourist trap.
Although many have to use the crowded transport hub frequently, for example on the way to work or the theatre, very few really enjoy doing so voluntarily.
One city magazine advised locals that if they do happen to be in Times Square and bump into a friend, they should say they are only there for “research purposes”, and then quickly disappear again.
Some even wish for the time before the square was clean and traffic-calmed, like the famously critical author Fran Lebowitz: “Times Square is the worst neighbourhood in the world.” – dpa
