Views from the Digital Collections: Times Square

Times Square has many nicknames, "Crossroads of the World," "Center of the Universe," or if you’re a New Yorker, "the last place you’d like to be." Located at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue at 42nd Street, Times Square is one of the most recognizable intersections in the world and, for many, a quintessential tourist destination.

These days our city’s bustling commercial hub is filled with bright lights and advertisements everywhere you look. It has been this way for the better part of a century, but Times Square didn’t evolve into the living commercial that we know until 1904 when Adolph S. Ochs, then publisher of The New York Times, moved the city’s paper of record to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street in what was then the Longacre Square neighborhood. The building was at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and on the facade was a brilliant, shining sign that read "Times." Ochs then persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square.”

NYPL’s Digital Collections contain photos of Times Square throughout the twentieth century.