Every New Year`s Eve, as millions watch in person and on television, a descending red ball atop the Allied Chemical Building in Times Square counts off the seconds remaining in the old year.
At times of great national joy, such as the end of World Wars I and II, hordes of celebrants have gathered in this famous square. And every day of the year, at least a half million New York City visitors find their way to Times Square, drawn as irresistibly to this urban cauldron of humanity as a hummingbird is drawn to a flower.
They come to this midtown square-actually a huge asphalt ”X” formed by the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue at 44th Street-to go to the theater and the movies, to gawk at the huge electric signs and to dine out. Times Square is in the center of the theater district, which extends from 42nd to 52nd Streets and from 6th to 8th Avenues, and within easy walking distance of Rockefeller Center and 5th Avenue`s toney shops. The Times Square subway station is the busiest in the city; several lines meet there.
During the past two decades, however, the bloom has faded. Times Square went to seed. Raunch, dirtiness and crime so cheapened the square that even street-savvy residents avoided it.
Now a turnaround is in the making. Times Square has a long way to go, but New York City`s most popular gathering spot may be on the road to new greatness.
Four new hotels have opened in the Times Square/theater district in the past few months, and another has been completely renovated. Two others have just begun construction. These will bring thousands more tourists to the Square.
New office buildings have opened in the area in the past year and others are nearing completion, including two directly on Times Square, swelling the work force in the square. Prestigious companies like the Kravath, Swaine and Moore law firm and Ogilvy and Mather advertising have taken space in sleek new West Side skyscrapers, prompting an accelerating move of businesses to the Times Square area.
Razing the sleaze
An entire block that contains some of Times Square`s worst excesses-sleazy movie houses, crack dealing, cheap stores-has been condemned. Already, several X-rated movie houses on 42nd Street between 8th Avenue and Broadway have been closed, and the city and state have unveiled a $2.5 billion plan to restore nine magnificent old theaters, raze derelict buildings and build four new office buildings, a merchandise mart and a hotel in their place.
At the same time, a $135 million reconstruction of the huge but decrepit Times Square subway station will be undertaken.
All these developments will put new life into Times Square, but the tawdriness and crime that infests the area will not easily disappear. Crime is so prevalent in parts of the square that even the city`s sanitation workers are leery about doing their job there.
”It`s getting worse,” Granville Arizmendi, supervisor of the Times Square clean-up squad, said of crime in his district. ”We used to send our men down 42nd Street. No more.
Gangs of youthful robbers roam the area-”dip teams,” the police call them. One gang lifted the wallet of a friend of mine as he was entering the revolving door of his hotel a few steps from Times Square. In the seconds it took for him to revolve back out onto the sidewalk, the youths were already halfway down the block and out of reach of police.
Times were worse
But as serious as the situation may seem, it can`t compare to the mid-1970s, when Times Square sleaze was so pervasive that a creative police captain once put up wooden barriers to separate the milling prostitutes from people walking on the sidewalks.
”We were ringed with peep shows, whorehouses, street walkers and drug dealers,” said Lee Silver, executive director of the Shubert Theater Organization.
In cooperation with the mayor`s office, theater people organized a committee to work on the problem. That group, now known as the Office of Midtown Enforcement, proved effective in driving away the prostitutes and closing up the massage parlors. Their efforts helped to revive the theater district and encourage new development-particularly the key construction in 1986 of Times Square`s first new hotel in years, the Marriott Marquis.
Given the number of people who visit the area, the percentage of crime is not great. Thousands of people dine in the area and attend the theater every evening without problem, avoiding 42nd Street, which has little of interest to visitors.
The most exciting part of Times Square`s prospective rejuvenation is the 42nd Street Development Project, which will be the largest urban renewal project in the state`s history.
A key part of the project is the restoration of the historic old theaters on 42nd Street, places where Sarah Bernhardt, John Barrymore, George M. Cohan, George Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Fanny Brice and the Marx Brothers once performed.
The beaux arts New Amsterdam Theater, for instance, will be renovated to accommodate a 1,500-seat musical theater on the main floor and a smaller one on the site of the former rooftop theater, where years ago the Midnight Frolics drew late-night revelers. At least two of the other eight theaters-the Victory and the Liberty-will be restored for non-profit use.
Although part of the aim of the project is to clean up the tawdriness of the area, there`s no intent to turn the block into something squeaky clean.
Signs of the times
Bright lights and signs are part of that ambience, and they will be an integral part in the new 42nd Street.
All the new buildings facing Times Square also are required to mount lighted signs on their facades. Indeed, the nighttime wattage in Times Square probably will be greater a couple years from now than it ever has been, making that part of Broadway once again a ”Great White Way.”
For now, however, some of the square`s most famous lighted signs are gone, some temporarily, some permanently.
The huge Coca-Cola sign at the north end of the square, perhaps the most photographed in the world, came down when the building it stood on was razed to make room for a new hotel. However, it will be remounted on the new structure.
Oldtimers may remember the Bond Clothing waterfall, which once was flanked with semi-nude male and female statues. After objections arose, said Phil Marshall of Art-Kraft, the city`s biggest sign company, ”we had to put neon clothes on them.” Still later, when Pepsi took over the sign, the statues were replaced with giant Pepsi bottles.
Then there were the Camel cigarette sign that blew smoke rings, the walking Johnny Walker, Budweiser`s animated neon Clydesdales, Wrigley`s dancing fountains and fish, and Maxwell House`s perpetually dripping coffee cup.
None of these famous signs exist any longer, but Marshall says the new sign law requires even brighter signs than before, so as new buildings replace the old, the neon signs of tomorrow may be even splashier.
Signs aren`t the only thing that have changed in Times Square.
Out with the old
The Paradise Roof Garden, built by Oscar Hammerstein I at the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd Street, had a miniature farm village with cottages and windmills, live trees and animals. It disappeared long ago.
The old Paramount Theater, where girls first screamed and swooned over Frank Sinatra`s singing, is gone. (The screaming swooners, incidentally, were hired by Sinatra`s publicist.) The landmark Times building was sold and renovated into a modern tower, though its new tenant, the Allied Chemical Corp., retained the moving electric news sign and New Year`s Eve`s red ball.
Nathan`s Famous closed a few years back, as did Toffanetti`s cafeteria and Jack Dempsey`s restaurant, all longtime Times Square fixtures. The Latin Quarter building has just been torn down to make room for a Hampton Inn.
But the new buildings rising in and around Times Square may inaugurate new traditions. Certainly they are injecting new life into the district.
Holiday Inn`s classy new 46-story Crowne Plaza has a pool (a rarity in New York hotels), a David Leiderman restaurant, a popular lobby bar called Samplings with tapas-like appetizers, more elevators than usually required (to reduce waiting time) and reasonable (for New York City) rates, $159 on weekends, $185 weekdays.
Across the way, the new 43-story Embassy Suites is the first chain suite hotel in the city. Built above the landmark Palace Theater, it has a 120-foot high display of neon and offers its usual complimentary breakfast and cocktails to guests.
On 44th Street, the new 52-story Macklowe puts its emphasis on attracting businessmen with 33 dedicated meeting rooms, an in-room computer system called the MackTel System, and an ”Insider” program under which the hotel says it uses local contacts to obtain special theater seats, dining reservations and preferential treatment.
On 54th Street a few blocks north of Times Square proper but still within what is regarded as the theater district is another new hotel, the 54-story all-suite Rihga Royal, which lays claim to being the tallest hotel in the city. Faced with red brick and granite, the elegant hotel offers European-style ambience with such touches as a full-time in-house florist, marble bathrooms and six royal suites and a number of meeting rooms with superb views on the top floors.
Then there is the old Century Paramount Hotel, a beaux arts beauty renovated and reopened as the Paramount Hotel by Ian Schrager of Studio 54 fame. The rooms are smallish but stylish, and black and white is the theme.
(The hotel only sells black and white post cards and the staff wears black.)
Lights, action, people. It looks as if everything may come together in Times Square. Now, if they could only straighten out the traffic.
