Times Square is centered around the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue from 42nd to 47th streets. It got its name when the New York Times office, at One Times Square, was built at 43rd Street and Broadway at the beginning of the twentieth century. The district came of age during the Roaring Twenties when millions of visitors came to be entertained at cabarets, dance halls, vaudeville shows, and brothels. The poor went to dive bars and the rich ate at fancy restaurants, indulging in conspicuous consumption at fine hotels like the Knickerbocker and Astor. Times Square was best known as the home of vaudeville shows, a blend of music, dancing, and comedy designed to appeal to the new middle class. Burlesque shows—featuring slapstick humor and chorus girls wearing tights (and sometimes even less)—were also popular and sometimes indistinguishable from vaudeville performances.

But after the stock market crash of 1929, Times Square went from glorious to tawdry; even the names of the new amusements—penny arcades, dime museums, and nickel shows—reflected the lack of prosperity. Burlesque shows became more risqué, films eventually replaced most of the live theatricals, and prostitutes and peep shows became common, a trend that only intensified during World War II as the area became a haven for off–duty soldiers. Musicals and legitimate theater still prospered, but Times Square became known as a center of vice more sordid, exciting, and dangerous than the red light districts of Europe.

The area’s slide into depravity had aroused the ire of moralists and reformers (including Mayor LaGuardia) since the invention of the strip tease in 1927. But reform was fairly ineffectual, and by the 1970s Times Square was as dangerous as any place in New York. However, in the 1990s parts of the square were razed, rebuilt and, to a degree, sanitized, as Mayor Rudy Giuliani cracked down on illegal activities and brought in corporate interests. Some New Yorkers protest that the old Times Square was a lot more fun, but in a sense the new Times Square—which features the headquarters of Disney and MTV—is just going back to its roots as a center of the American entertainment industry. It is one of the world’s busiest intersections, with nearly 1.5 million people passing through the area each day.