The Rise and Fall of Times Square
A Change of Fortunes
You can always take advantage of a situation, and in Times Square that is just what happened. Originally a horse trading post, the site underwent a dramatic transformation during the 20th century. Plans for the city’s rapid transit system in the late 1800’s positioned the intersection as a major activity hub, a point of confluence for riders heading up- and downtown.
At turn of the century, Times Square flourished. By 1900, you would find elegant restaurants doubling as nightclubs entertaining guests with lobster, orchestras, and floor shows. The newly built Times Building and the Astor Hotel opened in 1904, bringing their Gothic and Beaux Arts beauty to the site and inviting further development. The Paramount Building and its namesake theater opened in 1927, perhaps the last grand additions to the Square before the Great Depression chilled its rise.
“(...) the neighborhood changed dramatically after the stock market crash of 1929. Few new theaters were built, and during the Depression many existing ones were converted into cheap ‘grinder’ houses that offered continuous showings of sexually explicit films.” — Encyclopedia of New York City ↗
In the following decades, the space would become unrecognizable. A steady shift to lowly forms of entertainment gave way to sex trade, drug trafficking, and other forms of predation. The 1970s and 1980s would see a crimewave taking over the block.
"On the streets, prostitution by all genders, open drug trade, alcoholism, and con games, like three-card monte and clio, became commonplace. Inside, crime thrived in the underground corridors of the subway and the passages at the Port Authority Bus Terminal despite the abundance of police. By the late 1970s, the Times Square area recorded the most felony and net crime complaints in the city." — Times Square Official Website ↗
A False Renewal
Considering the bad reputation Times Square earned in the 1980s, looking at the state of place today seems like an achievement. But even now, the space remains a place to avoid. You could as well say that, in terms of historical development, Times Square is still in adolescence. Because as much as the iconic intersection carries associations of modernity in the media, and as much as the place somehow remains a model for what other cities should become, Times Square is different in real life. Being there is not nice, and any sense of greatness quickly dissolves in sensory overload.
You can feel the chaos as you approach the site. The intense foot- and car traffic make you defensive. Every time you stop you are in someone's way. In extreme awareness of your movements and the flow of people, you can't be at ease. But at the same time your attention is being drawn away by the screens. They are flashing urgently, trying to tell you something: A Broadway play, a TV show, a clothing brand, a Disney character, a Happy Meal. Frenetic subject matter incoherence, flashing day and night, desperately competing for attention and accomplishing exactly the opposite.
This is not a place you would like to spend an afternoon at, not even a couple hours. Time Square is not a "place to be" the way Union Square is or the way Washington Square is. This is no place to sit peacefully, there is light, there is noise, food-truck smoke, wailing sirens, and numerous other pollutions. It's only ironic that the city's top destination has become a liminal space, a place of transience you only walk through to see what's happening, without there ever being anything compelling you to stay.
A Search for Meaning
Is there any meaning in Times Square? It is hard to make sense of the space, very tough to understand what it accomplishes at all. Because if you ask about the purpose, it's hard to come up with answers... What's the point of this place? The intersection of 7th and Broadway is a grand case of 'channel overload', the same phenomenon that happens with every other medium in advertising — spam on your email, spam on your phone, spam on your mailbox, now gloriously plastered on your built environment.
Times Square is the chaos of modernity embodied in urban form, a space 'taken away' from the city, a place taken advantage of. Even to the new city resident, 42nd Street signifies chaos to be avoided.
This is not a happy place, but an ode to sensory predation. Because those flashing lights and screens, they are not there to please you. They are the product of an inertia, a for-profit, mass-media dynamic that will do anything to drill some messages deep into your head in order to bump a corporate bottom line. There's nothing meaningful to experience, only things to stare at. Of the hundreds or thousands of souls on Times Square at any time, no one knows what they're doing here, no one really belongs here.
In the 21st Century, Times Square is now a calamity of a different kind. This is no urban wonder, but a place fallen to continued abuse and misfortune. The promise it holds, still waiting to be realized. Perhaps one day, the sun will shine on a gentler, charming, more beautiful Square.
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