Daytime Walk Through Times Square, NYC 2025

Times Square takes its name from The New York Times, which moved its headquarters to the newly built One Times Square in 1904 — the same building where the New Year's Eve ball drop has taken place nearly every year since 1907. It sits at the crossing of Broadway and Seventh Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, and has been the symbolic center of the city's theater district for over a century.

The square is best known for its towering digital billboards, a fixture of the area since the 1990s and now required by city zoning for buildings around the square — making Times Square one of the only places in the world where advertising signage is mandatory rather than restricted. In 2009 the city closed several blocks to traffic and turned them into pedestrian plazas, which is largely what visitors walk through today.

By day, without the neon glow that defines its nighttime reputation, Times Square is still one of the busiest pedestrian intersections on Earth — a mix of tourists, Broadway theaters, chain retail flagships, and the NYPD substation that keeps an eye on all of it.