Times Square

Times Square is named after the New York Times, which moved its headquarters to the newly built One Times Square tower in nineteen oh four. Before that, the area was called Longacre Square, and it was the centre of the city's horse-and-carriage industry.

The newspaper moved out long ago. One Times Square — the building where the ball drops on New Year's Eve — is now almost entirely empty inside. The building makes more money from the advertising on its exterior than it ever could from renting office space. It is essentially a billboard disguised as a skyscraper.

In the nineteen seventies and eighties, Times Square was one of the most dangerous places in New York — a concentrated grid of strip clubs, pornography theatres, and drug dealing. The cleanup began in the early nineteen nineties under Mayor Giuliani, and by two thousand it had been transformed into the family-friendly commercial zone it is today.

Fifty million people pass through Times Square every year. The electronic billboards consume enough energy to power a small town. It is loud, bright, overwhelming, and genuinely unlike anywhere else on earth. Go once, form an opinion, and then never go back — or go every time.