TWO TIMES SQUARE

Huge Billboards

Life in Times Square

 

With all that is going on I was in two minds about posting this.

I made a few changes to the text and because two of PJ Lehrer’s most exciting photographs, all colour, angles, darks and neon; taken in Times Square, Well I immediately wanted to make drawings.

 

Brightly lit by huge billboards and advertisements, Times Square stretches between West 42 and 47th Streets. It is sometimes referred to the cross roads of the World. It is one of the busiest places; one hundred and thirty-one million people a year visit Times Square for is it is also the heart of the Broadway Theatre District.

 

Formerly known as Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the then newly erected Times Building. Nearly sixty years later the newspaper described the area as ‘the 'worst' in town’ for then and up until the 1990’s its go-go bars, sex shops, peep shows and adult theatres, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

 

Several city majors orchestrated campaigns to clean up the area notably in the mid-1990s, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square

 

Certainly the media circus is in town: ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is made every day, competing Hershey's and M&M's stores are across the street from each other; and multiple multiplex theatres. You can enjoy a meal Ruby Foo's Chinese Restaurant; or the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, or there is always Planet Hollywood.