One Times Square
Encyclopedia
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
at 42nd Street
42nd Street (Manhattan)
42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, known for its theaters, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square. It is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection...
and Broadway
Broadway (New York City)
Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...
in Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
.
It was the second tallest building in Manhattan when it opened. The famous New Year's Times Square Ball
Times Square Ball
The Times Square Ball is a time ball dropped each year during the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, Manhattan, New York City. The ball is made by Waterford Crystal and electric lights is raised to the top of a pole on the One Times Square building at 6:00 pm and then lowered to mark the...
drop is performed annually from its roof. It was originally built to be the headquarters of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. The Times was to start the tradition of dropping the ball. It also introduced a news ticker
News ticker
A news ticker resides in the lower third of the television screen space on television news networks dedicated to presenting headlines or minor pieces of news. It may also refer to a long, thin scoreboard-style display seen around the front of some offices or public buildings...
(the "zipper") that has made it a gathering spot during world events.
History
Times SquareTimes Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
held a celebration of the opening of its new headquarters with a display of fireworks
Fireworks
Fireworks are a class of explosive pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. The most common use of a firework is as part of a fireworks display. A fireworks event is a display of the effects produced by firework devices...
on January 1, 1905, at midnight. This celebration at Times Square continues to this day. The famous New Year's Eve Ball drop tradition began in 1907. The dropping of the ball was adapted from the United States Naval Observatory
United States Naval Observatory
The United States Naval Observatory is one of the oldest scientific agencies in the United States, with a primary mission to produce Positioning, Navigation, and Timing for the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of Defense...
practice of lowering a time ball
Time ball
A time ball is a large painted wooden or metal ball that drops at a predetermined time, principally to enable sailors to check their marine chronometers from their boats offshore...
with a flag to signal the time of noon. This goes back to the mid-19th century.
Less than ten years after moving to One Times Square, The New York Times moved its corporate headquarters to a nearby building, 229 West 43rd Street, in 1913. The Times retained a classified advertising branch office in the building until it sold the Times Tower in 1961. The Times is now headquartered in the New York Times Building
New York Times Building
The New York Times Building is a skyscraper on the west side of Midtown Manhattan that was completed in 2007. Its chief tenant is The New York Times Company, publisher of The New York Times as well as The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, and other newspapers...
on nearby Eighth Avenue.
In 1928, the famous electric news ticker
News ticker
A news ticker resides in the lower third of the television screen space on television news networks dedicated to presenting headlines or minor pieces of news. It may also refer to a long, thin scoreboard-style display seen around the front of some offices or public buildings...
display near the base of the building was first used to announce the results of the US presidential election of 1928. Spanning the base of the entire building, the sign was originally made of 14,800 lamps. The ticker was dark between 1975 and 1980, when Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
sponsored the revival of the display. The ticker is now sponsored by Dow Jones, the parent of The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in the early 1940s, the ball lowering was stopped for two years due to wartime blackouts and energy conservation. A celebration was still held, but the crowds observed a minute of silence for the wartime efforts.
From building to billboard
The Times sold the building to Douglas LeighDouglas Leigh
Douglas Leigh was an American advertising executive and lighting designer, and a pioneer in signage and outdoor advertising. He is famous for making New York City's Times Square the site of some of the world's most famous electric billboards...
in 1961. Leigh then sold the building to Allied Chemical
Honeywell
Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....
in 1963. Allied Chemical greatly modified the building's facade, replacing intricate granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
and terracotta elements with marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
facing and simple concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
paneling. This refurbishment made a majority of the building's exterior a sheer wall, with the exception of floor-to-ceiling windows on the 16th floor. The 16th floor was a restaurant space for some time, allowing diners to eat their meals in Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
elegance at eye level with the glittering towers all around the square. However, the restaurant space has been closed since the 1980s.
Air conditioning
An air conditioner is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle...
, the building currently has no tenants above the retail floors and is only used to hold dozens of colorful advertisements. Additionally, the operators of One Times Square have noted that the building generates more revenue as a collection of advertisements than it would full of tenants. In 2000, it was reported that the building's 26 signs bring in monthly rent checks ranging from $100,000 to $250,000.
In recent times the building has been vacant except for occasional tenants in the retail space. In the late 1990s, a Warner Bros. retail store filled the first three floors, but most of the building remained vacant. For three weeks in March 2006, the first three floors were occupied by a "JC Penney Experience" store. The building's first three floors currently house a flagship Walgreens
Walgreens
Walgreen Co. , doing business as Walgreens , is the largest drugstore chain in the United States of America. As of August 31st, the company operates 8,210 locations across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1901, and has since expanded...
pharmacy, which opened in November 2008, On opening day, Walgreens launched the largest LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....
sign in Times Square. Walgreens' 17000 square feet (1,579.4 m²) sign with over 12 million LEDs dwarfs the previous largest LED sign in Times Square, the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
sign on Broadway. The Walgreens sign, designed by Gilmore Group
Gilmore Group
Gilmore Group is a multidisciplinary design and branding firm based in New York City. The firm was established in 2003 by Arthur Gilmore, President, and managing partners, Greg Tribbe and Louis Lombardi....
and built by D3 LED
D3 LED
D3 LED LLC. , an American company based in New Jersey, engineers and manufactures LED signs, Digital Displays, Marquee Systems, Tickers, and related products...
, runs diagonally up both sides of the building and loops around the front, and weighs 250,000 pounds. Most of the remainder of the building was sheathed in a white fabric shortly before the Walgreens sign came online.
In late 2006, the iconic NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
Peacock that hung above the Panasonic
Panasonic
Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...
Jumbotron
Jumbotron
A JumboTron is a large-screen television using technology developed by Sony, typically used in sports stadiums and concert venues to show close-up shots of the event. Although JumboTron is a registered trademark owned by the Sony Corporation, the word jumbotron is often used by the public as a...
was replaced with the logo of News Corp.
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
, the parent company of Fox
Fox Entertainment Group
The Fox Entertainment Group is an American entertainment industry company that owns film studios and terrestrial, cable, and direct broadcast satellite television properties...
. Weeks later, the Budweiser
Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch)
Budweiser is a 5.0% abv American-style lager introduced in 1876 by Adolphus Busch and one of the highest selling beers in the United States. It is made with up to 30% rice in addition to hops and barley malt. Budweiser is produced in various breweries located around the world...
billboard that hangs above the JumboTron
Jumbotron
A JumboTron is a large-screen television using technology developed by Sony, typically used in sports stadiums and concert venues to show close-up shots of the event. Although JumboTron is a registered trademark owned by the Sony Corporation, the word jumbotron is often used by the public as a...
was expanded into a complete LED High definition screen, and the Cup Noodles
Cup noodles
Cup Noodles is a brand of instant ramen noodle snack manufactured by Nissin, packaged in a polyethylene foam, hard plastic or paper cup. The product is known for being inexpensive and easy to prepare...
ad that had hung above the former Peacock logo and Budweiser ads was taken down and replaced by a new Chevrolet
Chevrolet
Chevrolet , also known as Chevy , is a brand of vehicle produced by General Motors Company . Founded by Louis Chevrolet and ousted GM founder William C. Durant on November 3, 1911, General Motors acquired Chevrolet in 1918...
billboard that features a clock. The Chevy ad was replaced early December 2009 with an ad for Kia
Kia Motors
Kia Motors , headquartered in Seoul, is South Korea's second-largest automobile manufacturer, following the Hyundai Motor Company, with sales of over 1.4 million vehicles in 2010...
. In late 2007, Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
contracted the uppermost sign on One Times Square which was formerly advertising Discover Card
Discover Card
The Discover Card is a major credit card, issued primarily in the United States. It was originally introduced by Sears in 1985, and was part of Dean Witter, and then Morgan Stanley, until 2007, when Discover Financial Services became an independent company. Novus, a major processing center, used to...
. It is used for advertising it's products as well as on New Year's Eve, a sponsored sixty second countdown clock for the ball drop. And in late 2008, for the 2009 New Year's Eve celebration, the roof of the building was redesigned to accommodate an enlarged flagpole for the new New Year's Eve Ball, which was doubled in size and is displayed year-round at a new height of 485 ft (147.8 m). (Before New Year's 2009, the ball was taken off the flagpole shortly after New Year's and stored.) In 2010, a new Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
Jumbotron took the place of the Panasonic, and continues to be sponsored by News Corp.
The digital signs on the building are considered to be the most valuable in the world. They can often be rented by the day or by the hour for product launches or other special events. The rental rates can be as high as $10,000 per hour.