Why Times Square’s Billboards Are Required By Law ｜ Walking Tour ｜ Architectural Digest)

Times Square, a symphony of screens. Over 300,000 square feet of LEDs, with lights so bright you could see them from outer space. Over a billion people see these screens on TV when the ball drops on New Year's Eve. But how many know that those screens aren't just for advertising? In fact, they're required by law. I'm Michael Weitzner. I've been an architect in New York City for over 35 years. And today, we're taking a walking tour of Times Square and shining a light on how it became known as the crossroads of the world. The bright lights and flashing billboards in Times Square aren't just about maximizing advertising dollars. They are actually required by law. Every renovation or new construction project in Times Square is subject to a New York City zoning resolution from 2011. This resolution not only mandates that every construction project in the Times Square area include at least one illuminated sign, but it also lays out exactly how large they are required to be. Buildings on Broadway or 7th Avenue now legally must create 50 square feet of illuminated signs for every one linear foot of building facade facing the street. For example, 3 Times Square has 200 linear feet of street frontage along 7th Avenue. So it was required to include at least 10,000 square feet of illuminated signs. And I should know because our firm designed the first 11 floors of this building in 2022. But why does New York City want so many billboards? After all, other U.S. cities like Houston and Denver have passed laws against building new billboards. So whose bright idea was this resolution requiring these massive electric signs? It might seem obvious that advertisers would want a piece of the most famous public plaza in the world. But the real reason for the billboard mandate is less about revenue and more about historic preservation. And we're not talking about preserving the architecture. We're talking about preserving the character of Times Square. Times Square has been known for lighted signs since 1904 when O.J. Goode designed the Trimble Whiskey sign for the Studebaker building at the north end of Times Square. He had been making lighted signs up and down Broadway and realized that the unique bowtie shape of Times Square created a perfect view corridor to the building, making it an ideal spot for high visibility advertising. O.J. Goode created many of the iconic early signs in Times Square, which he called Spectaculars. Over the years, Times Square has been known for its elaborate and bright advertisements that built on his designs, including the Camel Cigarette sign, Cuppa Noodles, Coca-Cola, and many more. So the 2011 resolution wasn't about introducing bright lights, but it was about preserving and expanding them. And in fact, it's actually just the most recent update to a resolution first proposed in 1986 by then mayor Ed Koch. As recently as the 1980s, Times Square was not a family-friendly, brand-safe advertiser's paradise. It was considered the seedy underbelly of New York City, a red light district filled with drugs and theaters showing adult films. But the 1986 resolution re-zoned the area, which forced out the adult establishments. It also called for even more electric signs. The idea was to maintain the character of Times Square as a literal bright spot in the heart of Manhattan and to increase public safety by creating well-lit streets to deter crime. This zoning resolution started a domino effect, ultimately resurrecting Times Square from a sketchy part of town to a family-friendly global attraction. And one of the most visited public spaces in the world, with around 50 million visitors every year. It is also the site of one of New York's most famous traditions, the ball drop on New Year's Eve. And in fact, that celebration is directly connected to how Times Square got its name, literally. This building behind me is one Times Square where the ball drops on New Year's Eve. It's potentially the most valuable piece of real estate in New York City and definitely the most expensive advertising space in Times Square. One estimate put the revenue that it earns from advertising on its billboards at over $23 million a year. This building is really the spark that lit up Times Square as we know it today. Even though when it was first built, it did not have any illuminated signs at all. It was designed by Cyrus L.W. Edelitz and Andrew C. McKenzie. And it was built in 1904 to be the headquarters of the New York Times. The owner of the New York Times, Adolph Oaks, also pushed to have a subway stop right here on 42nd Street that was connected directly to the building. This is because the Times was printing their newspaper on site and this connection to the subway system made it faster to distribute the paper throughout the city. To find out more about this, we caught up with Michael Phillips of Jamestown, which owns and operates One Times Square. This was the first headquarters of New York Times. They printed the newspapers in the building and then took them down into the three subsellers and onto the distribution lines of the subway. So all of this sort of evolved together as an early dissemination and communication of the news throughout the city. But the side effect of building this station was that it brought more foot traffic to the area, which helped to shift the cultural center of New York further uptown. Because the New York Times was here, people began gathering here to get their news. And the building became a part of many iconic moments in history, leading to the status of Times Square as the crossroads of the world. In 1919, World Series updates were given to massive crowds watching a mechanical scoreboard on the Times Tower. And in 1928, the Times building would get its first electric sign, the iconic news zipper or ticker, which broadcasts headlines to people on the street. It wrapped 380 feet around the Times Tower and was five feet tall, making headlines visible for blocks. At the end of World War II, crowds filled Times Square to celebrate V-J Day. But maybe the most enduring contribution of One Times Square to the world happens every year at midnight on December 31st. As we understand it, on December 31st, 1903, there were fireworks on top of this building. But then you said something really interesting that they had to change to a ball drop because... At the end of 1906, they outlawed fireworks in the city of New York for fear of fire. And that gave way to designing the first New Year's Eve ball, which we have a replica of in the history experience, which was quite a small but mighty ball at the time. And now we are into the evolution of the New Year's Eve ball, which you'll see the most recent one that went up for New Year's 2526. So the ball has over 5,000 crystals, which was possible through removing an air conditioning system that ran 24 hours a day in the old ball to keep it cool because of incandescent light technology. So now with LED technology, we have over twice the crystals and far more programmability to send messages out. How many people globally watch the ball drop? So we have over a billion people watching New Year's Eve. And in the square, we usually have over a million. And so in terms of impressions, both on streaming and broadcast, gamification with partners like Fortnite, with our streaming and those channels, it's quite an extraordinary eye count. That's incredible. So that's like one eighth of the world's population is watching this event every year. And it's even more amplified throughout the year because of social media and repost of photos. And it's why Times Square is such a productive branded advertising commitment for people. So tell us about the history of the electronic billboards and all the billboards that Times Square has become famous for. Well, so originally they were wheat paste on board and then they became mechanical. Things like the cup of soup or mechanical arms moving. And really in the early 2000, the signs started to be replaced with digital technology and the pixels became tighter and you could get a better resolution. We went to an all digitized format in the mid teens. And at the same time, Times Square had an initiative to sync all the buildings in the square. So now there's something called Midnight Moment for art takeovers or nonprofit events. You can take over all the signs in the square at once. And that's really a great innovation that's come through digitization. In 1913, the newspaper outgrew the building and moved its headquarters to West 43rd Street. But the Times still owned the building until 1961 when it was sold to a company called Allied Chemical. Allied Chemical tore off the original facade, such a shame, taking everything down to the studs or in this case, down to the steel girders. But that wouldn't be the last major renovation. In 1996, the famous electronic billboards were installed on the north facade. And in 2025, a $550 million renovation created a 360 degree viewing platform, as well as a museum dedicated to the history of Times Square. The building really kind of never found itself as a space to occupy for people again. It became more of a signpost over the years. And really for the last sort of 75 years has been fully vacant. So we've been calling this a 21st century visitor center for New York City. The building will be 22 floors of experiences that start with a VIP history and experience of the New Year's Eve ball. But despite the extensive transformation of the building, the original structural skeleton of one Times Square is still there, buried in a cocoon of progress. And in fact, if it weren't for this building, Times Square wouldn't even exist. It was only after the Times moved in in 1904 that the area became known as Times Square. And if that never happened, this intersection would still be known by its original name, Longacre Square. This is the Wintergarden Theater, one of the most iconic theaters of New York's Broadway district. It has been the home of iconic Broadway staples like Mamma Mia, Cats, and the first musical adaptation of Peter Pan. But before this area became the heart of the theater district in New York City, this building hosted another iconic New York event, horse auctions. In the late 1800s, cars were not yet common and the city was highly dependent on horses and horse-drawn carriages. And so the horse and carriage industry was vital to the city. And it was housed here in what was then called Longacre Square. It was actually named after a square in London, also called Longacre, because that was the center of the horse and carriage trade across the pond as well. One of the richest families in New York at the time, the Vanderbilts, commissioned the American Horse Exchange, which was the original name for the building that now houses the Wintergarden Theater. This building was converted to a theater in 1911 and a giant billboard-style marquee was added to advertise the shows that were being played inside. The sign today occupies the same space as the Wintergarden Theater continues to host Broadway shows over a hundred years later. It is one of the few theaters from the early 1900s that still survives. After many others were destroyed in the name of progress, as Times Square continued its evolution from the mud and muck of the horse market to the glitz and glamor of today. Behind this massive electronic billboard that stretches an entire city block is the New York Marriott Marquee Hotel. To make space for this building, five original Broadway theaters were demolished, an event that has been called the Great Theater Massacre of 1982. It's a bit ironic that the hotel is named the Marquee since it actually destroyed the lighted marquees of some of Broadway's oldest theaters. The Astor, Bijou, Gaiety, Helen Hayes, and Morasco theaters were all raised to make way for the largest hotel in Times Square today. This building embodies an entire city block, and with a street frontage of 207 linear feet on Broadway, it is required to have more than 10,000 square feet of illuminated signs, a goal which it not only meets, but exceeds with a 25,000 square foot electric billboard. And while this building may be blamed for destroying some of Broadway's oldest theaters, it actually follows a tradition of hotels in Times Square that gave birth to the idea of the theater district in the first place. Over my shoulder is the Knickerbocker Hotel. It was designed by a firm called Marin and Davis with Bruce Price, a prolific New York architect who was also an early influence of Frank Lloyd Wright. You may notice the lack of electric signs. That's because it was built in 1906, long before any zoning resolution required them. And this building really is a testament to the family of New York royalty who foresaw the potential of Times Square back when it was still farmland. The Astor family bought a large tract of land in the early 1800s on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included this area along Broadway. At that time, Upper Manhattan was undeveloped and this area was known as Great Kill. Kill being the Dutch word for stream or river or creek. It was largely pastoral and disconnected from what was then the heart of the city near modern day Wall Street. In fact, the theater district in those days was clustered around Union Square, almost 30 blocks south of here. But in the 1870s, construction began on the first Grand Central Depot, the predecessor of the modern Grand Central Terminal. And as chance would have it, was due east of here. And when Adolph Oaks convinced the city to include a subway stop here in Times Square, the Astors saw the potential to make good on their early investment. By this time, the Astor family had broken that land up into smaller plots and distributed them among various heirs to the family fortune. John Jacob Astor IV built the Knickerbocker Hotel while William Waldorf Astor built the Astor Hotel just across the way. With two beautiful new hotels, cheap undeveloped land, and a brand new subway stop connecting Times Square to the heart of the city, theaters saw the opportunity to move in and build palaces to the dramatic arts. By 1928, Times Square had nearly 70 theaters and was unquestionably the theater capital of the United States. But the stock market crash of 1929 took a great toll on this area. During the Great Depression, fewer people were able to afford the theater or stay at these grand hotels. Hotel Astor was demolished, but the Knickerbocker survives as an example of the first era of Times Square's iconic status in the popular conscience. And also its enduring legacy that still draws people from around the world to bask in the bright lights of Broadway.