Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets.[1] Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World,[2] The Center of the Universe,[3] the heart of The Great White Way,[4][5][6] and the "heart of the world".[7] One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections,[8] it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District[9] and a major center of the world's entertainment industry.[10] Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually.[11] Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists;[12] while over 460,000 pedestrians walk through Times Square on its busiest days.[7]
Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.[13]
Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan.
In popular culture[edit]
Times Square has been featured countless times in literature, on television, in films, in video games, and in music videos.
An immediately recognizable location, Times Square has been frequently attacked and destroyed in a number of 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; the ending of Captain America: The First Avenger; and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Films 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. Times Square was also depicted in the 2011 movie, New Year's Eve, and was also seen in the festival battle scene in the 2002 film Spider-Man, and a stand-off in later film The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The ara was shown in the 1980 film Times Square, which featured a punk rock/new wave soundtrack. It also has featured prominently in video games, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, in which a recreation of the Times Square area is included in the game's fictional "Liberty City" setting; Battlefield 3, where the final fight with the main antagonist takes place, where the player must stop him from detonating a nuke in the square; and Crysis 2, in which player must fight off attacking alien forces in order to assist US Marines to evacuate the area. Times Square also appeared on The Amazing Race as one of the locations in a race around the world.