1872
Longacre Square
Named for London’s Long Acre, then the city’s horse-and-carriage yard. Vanderbilt’s American Horse Exchange sat here; it later became the Winter Garden Theatre.
Filed from Times Square — the crossroads that is not a square, only a five-block bowtie of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street.
Two triangles kissing at 45th Street. South is Times Square. North is Duffy Square.
Times Square sits where Broadway cuts the Manhattan grid — Seventh Avenue, 42nd Street, the Theater District. The official plaza runs roughly from 42nd to 47th. It is bowtie-shaped, not square.
The southern triangle keeps the Times Square name. The northern one is Duffy Square, dedicated in 1939 to Father Francis P. Duffy of the 69th New York Infantry. George M. Cohan stands nearby. The red TKTS booth has sold same-day Broadway tickets there since June 1973.
People also call it the Crossroads of the World, the Center of the Universe, and the heart of the Great White Way. The southeast corner — Broadway and 42nd — is the eastern end of the Lincoln Highway, the first coast-to-coast road for cars (1913).
Carriage lots → newspaper tower → ball drop → Broadway machine.
Named for London’s Long Acre, then the city’s horse-and-carriage yard. Vanderbilt’s American Horse Exchange sat here; it later became the Winter Garden Theatre.
Adolph Ochs puts The New York Times in a new tower on the old Pabst Hotel lot and talks the city into a subway stop. On 8 April the square is renamed. Three weeks later the first electric ad lights 46th and Broadway. The paper outgrows the tower by 1913. The building is now One Times Square — still the ball-drop mast.
New Year’s Eve crowds were already gathering. The Times starts lowering a huge glass ball down the flagpole. The ritual still pulls more than a million people into the plaza and a global TV audience past a billion.
The Times Square Alliance (Times Square District Management Association) is founded to clean, program, and push the district as entertainment, culture, and street life — not just signage.
Broadway theaters, public art on the big screens, plazas you can walk. The Times Square–42nd Street and Port Authority subway nodes still rank among the busiest in the system — more than 200,000 riders a day.
Theater, signs, and a neighborhood that never really closes.
Most Broadway houses sit in this district. The neon is advertising; the real product is eight shows a week behind those doors.
The old Times tower is now a billboard stack. Almost nobody works in it. The world still stares at its roof every 31 December.
Restaurants, souvenir rows, public art takeovers of the screens, and TSQ LIVE sets on the plazas. Official neighborhood brain: Times Square Alliance.
The one night the whole country borrows this corner.
A million-plus people stand in the bowtie. Another billion or more watch a crystal ball crawl the last seconds of the year down One Times Square. If you want to be in the plaza, you pick a viewing pen early and you do not leave.
A three-line pocket briefing. Not a tour brochure.
Times Square–42nd Street: 1 2 3 7 N Q R W and the 42nd Street Shuttle. Port Authority next door: A C E. Those two stations eat more than 200,000 riders a day.
Same-day discounts still live at TKTS on Duffy Square. Full-price booths and apps exist; the red glass stairs are the landmark.
Dawn and late weeknights are when the signs still scream and the sidewalks briefly belong to you. Midday is a river. NYE is a different city.
Public record, not vibes.
Geography, visitor counts, Longacre rename, Lincoln Highway terminus, subway load.
1904 naming, Theater District, the 1907 ball, and the long cleanup from Longacre’s rough years.
Events, arts on the screens, NYE, accessibility, and the 1992 BID that runs the district.
JULIA is a one-issue night guide hosted at julia.ojassurana.com. Figures are the commonly cited public estimates; they move year to year.