I figured I knew Times Square: bright lights, big crowds, a ball drop, and tourists walking at speeds that should be illegal. Then I started digging, and it turns out the “Crossroads of the World” is basically a magic trick. Did you know the most famous building in it — the one the ball drops from — is almost completely empty inside? Or that the whole ball-drop tradition only exists because the city banned fireworks? And don’t get me started on the man in his underwear who built a licensed trademark empire on that pavement. Here are ten Times Square facts that’ll make you the most interesting person at your next barbecue.
1. One Times Square is famous, iconic — and almost completely empty.
The skinny tower the ball drops from every New Year’s Eve — the most photographed building in the neighborhood — has virtually no one inside it. Above the bottom floors, it’s mostly vacant office space, and it’s been that way for decades. Why? Because the building earns a fortune as the world’s most valuable billboard frame; its owners make far more renting the outside than they ever could renting the inside. Roughly a billion people watch that building on TV every December 31, and almost nobody could tell you what’s in it. The answer: basically nothing.
2. It’s named after a newspaper — and the paper talked the city into it.
Until 1904, this was Longacre Square, a district of carriage shops and horse stables. Then The New York Times built its new headquarters there, and publisher Adolph Ochs lobbied the city to rename the square after his paper — which the mayor obligingly did, brand-new subway station included. The punchline? The Times outgrew the skinny tower and moved most of its operations out within about a decade. The paper left. The name stayed. Best free advertising deal in history.
3. The ball drop exists because New York banned fireworks.
The Times threw its first New Year’s rooftop party in 1904, complete with a fireworks show that rained hot ash onto the streets below. The city, reasonably, said never again. So for the end of 1907, the paper’s team hoisted a 700-pound wood-and-iron ball covered in a hundred light bulbs and lowered it down the flagpole at midnight instead. The workaround became the tradition. Every New Year’s Eve, you’re watching the world’s most glamorous fire-code compliance measure.
4. That ball is a direct descendant of a tool ships used to tell time.
Time balls are a real 19th-century technology: starting with the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1833, harbor towers dropped a large ball at a precise hour every day so ship captains could set their chronometers before sailing. By 1907 they were already being made obsolete by radio — and then Times Square borrowed the idea for one night a year and made it immortal. A million people now scream at the top of their lungs for a navigation instrument.
5. The most famous kiss in American history happened here — and took decades to explain.
August 14, 1945: Japan surrenders, World War II is effectively over, and Times Square erupts. In the middle of the chaos, a sailor grabs a woman in white and kisses her, and photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt catches it for Life magazine. Neither name was written down. For decades afterward, dozens of sailors and nurses came forward claiming to be the pair, and researchers spent years playing detective with forensic photo analysis. One frozen half-second of celebration became a 60-year mystery.
6. “The Crossroads of the World” isn’t just a slogan — the foot traffic is absurd.
On an ordinary day, hundreds of thousands of people walk through Times Square — a daily flow that rivals the entire population of a mid-sized American city, shuffling through a few blocks of Manhattan. It’s routinely ranked among the most visited places on Earth, beating out most national parks and world wonders. All of this in a “square” that isn’t even a square — it’s a bowtie-shaped intersection. Don’t tell the tourists.
7. A single billboard here can rent for more than $2.5 million a year.
Prime digital signage in Times Square commands rents north of $2.5 million annually — more than the price of an actual mansion, every single year, for a glowing rectangle. But here’s the truly weird part: the brightness isn’t optional. Times Square is one of the only places in the world where zoning rules require buildings to display huge illuminated signs. Everywhere else on Earth, the law limits how bright you can be. Here, it’s illegal to be boring.
8. The Naked Cowboy is a licensed trademark empire.
Since the late 1990s, a man named Robert Burck has stood in Times Square in cowboy boots, a hat, briefs, and a strategically placed guitar. Laugh all you want — he trademarked “Naked Cowboy,” turned himself into a franchise, and has licensed the act to other performers who pay for the privilege. He’s also gone to court to protect the brand, famously suing a candy company over a look-alike ad. The man in his underwear has better IP lawyers than most startups.
9. Within living memory, Times Square was the block your parents told you to avoid.
By the 1970s and ’80s, Times Square had decayed into one of the seediest stretches in America — grindhouse theaters, hustlers, and a crime rate that made it a national punchline. The turnaround came in the 1990s, when the city recruited Disney to restore the crumbling New Amsterdam Theatre; The Lion King moved in, the family crowds followed, and the whole district flipped in under a decade. New Yorkers still argue about whether the cleanup saved the square or sanitized it. The tourists, notably, do not care.
10. They closed Broadway to cars — and held the line with $10 lawn chairs.
In 2009, New York tried something radical: it shut down Broadway through Times Square to traffic, in the middle of the busiest city in America. The elegant urban furniture wasn’t ready, so the city scattered hundreds of cheap folding lawn chairs across the empty asphalt — and New Yorkers instantly sat down in the middle of Broadway like it was a beach. The experiment worked so well it became permanent. One of the great pedestrian plazas on Earth was beta-tested with patio furniture.
Which one made you say “no way”? Send this to the friend who swears they’ll never go near Times Square — or the one who owns an I ❤ NY shirt…
