If you’re looking for things to do in NYC this weekend, a visit to Midtown should be at the top of your list. Visitors will undoubtedly put Times Square on their list of places to see. This well-known landmark in the Big Apple receives over 360,000 visitors a day, every day throughout the year. Yet truth be told most people who travel to Times Square don’t do so to reach a particular destination. If someone goes to the Statue of Liberty, Metropolitan Museum of Art or one of New York’s thousands of other iconic landmarks, they do so to see Lady Liberty, view priceless works of art, etc. People go to Times Square to view its amazing spectacle (see the Times Square Cam). In fact if you’re reading this right now you’re one of the few people who is actually trying to learn more about this wonderful locale before you go. Times Square is an area filled with bright lights, street entertainment, hundreds of shops and restaurants and the most famous New Years Eve party on the planet, yet with all of this activity if you asked 10 different visitors why they go to Times Square, there would be no consistent answer.
Times Square is the most visited landmark in New York City, over 130 million visitors per year. To put this in perspective, the Metropolitan Museum of Art received about 6.25 million visitors last year and the Statue of Liberty reached 4 million. Times Square is it’s own uniquely unexplainable kind of three-ring circus-but we’re going to try anyway. Let’s start with the basics:
If you’re green, you’re going to hate the Times Square district. This area uses up to 161,000 megawatts of electricity an hour during peak times. This is enough electricity to power 150,000 homes for a year and is about 25% of the power output of a typical nuclear power plant!
Times Square was originally called Longacre Square until 1903. It was in this year that the New York Times relocated to the heart of the district, and upon doing so changed the name to Times Square. The newspaper sponsored the first Times Square New Years Eve celebration on December 31, 1907 and slowly lowered the first ball to the ground at midnight. Today, on New Year’s Eve, over 1 million people pack the area to watch the ball drop in person and over 1 billion watch it on television.
Today’s Times Square is a potpourri of everything NYC. The Hershey Store and the M&Ms Store sit side-by-side battling it out for the sugar fix champion of the district. Toys R’ Us houses a massive store complete with an indoor Ferris wheel and over 100 restaurants – all within a few blocks of each other. For a few dollars you can get your picture taken with the Naked Cowboy (he’s not really naked, he’s wearing a cowboy hat, oh and a speedo) or Superman, Iron Man, the Flash or one of the dozen other street actors dressed in super hero garb looking for work. Very importantly, there are over 100 plays and musicals on and off Broadway that are less than a five minute walk from the West Side of Times Square.
Location, Location, Location
Times Square is located between 40th and 53rd Street and 6th and 9th Avenue. Broadway is to the West and the Diamond District is to the East. Central Park is straight North. A trip to Times Square truly is a doorway to the best that Manhattan has to offer.
