As NYC's Times Square turns 120, is it more tourist trap than ever?

This square's actual namesake has long since moved on, but the world-famous name remains.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the New York Times built a skyscraper on 42nd Street in Manhattan, between 7th Avenue and Broadway.

On April 8, 120 years ago, then Mayor George McClellan signed a resolution officially renaming the elongated triangular intersection to the north of the building "Times Square".

"Times Square is the Name of the City's New Centre," read the headline of the eponymous daily newspaper the next morning.

The Times soon moved on

Before then, because horses and carriages were once also kept around today's Times Square, the area had been named Long Acre Square, after a former carriage neighbourhood in London.

But nobody was really attached to this name and with the arrival of more and more cars and skyscrapers such as the New York Times building, the new name seemed more in keeping with the times.

But in 1913 the daily newspaper itself moved further west into Manhattan and sold the One Times Square tower in 1961.

The tower remains the landmark of the square, which has long since become one of the most famous sights in the city.

The building - which has been almost completely empty for many years, is being renovated and, according to current plans, could be turned into a museum with a viewing platform - is now surrounded by news tickers and huge colourful advertising screens, as are many other buildings around the square.

This is one of the reasons why it is always almost as bright as day and the glow can be seen from afar.

According to counts by the Times Square Alliance neighbourhood association, almost 400,000 people now pass the so-called Crossroads of the World every day around the clock.

There are around three times as many each year on New Year's Eve, when the square is filled with confetti and people singing "Auld Lang Syne" and "New York, New York" to usher in the New Year.

The eyes of millions of people - in the square itself and on screens around the world - are then fixed on the top of One Times Square, where a glowing crystal ball traditionally slides down a flagpole for the so-called "ball drop".

Different times in the 80s

But Times Square always has things going on - not just on New Year's Eve. A few years after the renaming, the area around the long Broadway intersection, where around half a dozen underground lines cross, was transformed into a theatre district and is still the centre of the New York scene today.

For decades, however, the square around it fell into disrepair, becoming associated with drugs, crime, porn cinemas, sex shops and prostitution.

In the 1980s, the city council decided to take action against this. The area around Times Square was tidied up, cleaned up and renovated. The square itself is now largely a pedestrian zone.

This has helped the Broadway theatre scene to boom, with successful plays such as "The Lion King" and "Hamilton" attracting thousands of people every evening, as well as shops, hotels, restaurants, bars and an entire Broadway museum.

Tourists come to take selfies with famous street performers, like the guitarist dressed only in a cowboy hat and underwear.

In recent decades, Times Square has only ever been really quiet, and eerily so, during the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic. It was then that a very special work of art could be heard for the first time: The sound installation "Times Square" by US artist Max Neuhaus, who died in 2009, in which bell sounds emanate from a floor grid - without any explanatory signage.

'The worst neighbourhood in the world'

"We want Times Square to be a hub that captures and celebrates our culture, in every sense of that word," says the Times Square Alliance neighbourhood association.

"We want it to be a vibrant and democratic public space that exemplifies the civic, cultural and commercial life of our city, and of all great urban places. We want it to be a place by, of and for New Yorkers, that we can then share proudly with the rest of the world."

That's why, in addition to the big New Year's Eve party, the association organizes arts events, weddings, engagements on Valentine's Day and even mass yoga classes in the middle of the square to mark World Yoga Day in June.

For many New Yorkers, however, the square has become a tourist trap. Although many have to use the crowded transport hub frequently, for example on the way to work or the theatre, very few really enjoy doing so voluntarily.

One city magazine advised locas that if they do happen to be in Times Square and bump into a friend, they should say they are only there for "research purposes," and then quickly disappear again

Some even wish for the time before the square was clean and traffic-calmed, like the famously critical author Fran Lebowitz: "Times Square is the worst neighbourhood in the world."