One Times Square
One Times Square is a 25-story, skyscraper on Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Designed by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz in the neo-Gothic style, the tower was built in 1903–1904 as the headquarters of The New York Times. It takes up the city block bounded by Seventh Avenue, 42nd Street, Broadway, and 43rd Street. The building's design has been heavily modified throughout the years, and all of its original architectural detail has since been obscured or removed. One Times Square's primary design features are the advertising billboards on its facade, added in the 1990s. Due to the large amount of revenue generated by its signage, One Times Square is one of the most valuable advertising locations in the world.
The surrounding Longacre Square neighborhood was renamed "Times Square" during the tower's construction, and The New York Times moved into the tower in January 1905. Quickly outgrowing the tower, eight years later, the paper's offices and printing presses moved to nearby 229 West 43rd Street. One Times Square remained a major focal point of the area due to its annual New Year's Eve "ball drop" festivities and the introduction of a large lighted news ticker near street-level in 1928. The Times sold the building to Douglas Leigh in 1961. Allied Chemical then bought the building in 1963 and renovated it as a showroom. Alex M. Parker took a long-term lease for the entire building in October 1973, buying it two years later. One Times Square was sold multiple times in the 1980s and continued to serve as an office building.
The financial firm Lehman Brothers acquired the building in 1995, adding billboards to take advantage of its prime location within Times Square. Jamestown L.P. has owned the building since 1997. In 2017, as part of One Times Square's redevelopment, plans were announced to construct a new Times Square museum, observation deck, and a new entrance to the Times Square–42nd Street subway station. Jamestown started a $500 million renovation of the building in 2022. The renovation added an observation deck, a museum space, and a glass exterior, and was completed by January 2026.
Site
One Times Square is at the southern end of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It takes up the city block bounded by Seventh Avenue to the west, 42nd Street to the south, Broadway to the east, and 43rd Street to the north. The land lot is trapezoidal and covers. The full-block site has a frontage of to the west, to the south, to the east, and to the north. The shape of the site arises from Broadway's diagonal alignment relative to the Manhattan street grid. The building's address was originally 1475 Broadway, but it was changed to 1 Times Square in 1966. The current address is a vanity address assigned by the government of New York City. The addresses around Times Square are not assigned in any particular order; for example, 2 Times Square is several blocks away from 1 Times Square.Nearby buildings include 1501 Broadway to the north, 1500 Broadway to the northeast, 4 Times Square to the east, The Knickerbocker Hotel to the southeast, the Times Square Tower to the south, 5 Times Square to the southwest, and 3 Times Square to the west. An entrance to the New York City Subway's Times Square–42nd Street station, served by the, is directly adjacent to the building. There is also an entrance to the 42nd Street–Bryant Park/Fifth Avenue station, served by the, less than a block east.
Prior to the construction of what is now One Times Square, the northern end of the site had been part of the estate of Amos R. Eno, which had sold the site in 1901 to the Subway Realty Company. The southern end contained the Pabst Hotel, which had been built on land leased from Charles Thorley. The southeast corner of the building originally contained a plaque containing Thorley's name, as he had required that his name be placed on any building that was constructed on the site. The New York Times Company bought the site in 1927, four years after Thorley died, but the plaques remained until 1963.
History
''Times'' ownership
Newspaper publisher Adolph Ochs purchased The New York Times in 1896. The paper was then headquartered at 41 Park Row in Lower Manhattan, within the city's Newspaper Row. The Times expanded greatly under Ochs's leadership, prompting him to acquire land for a new headquarters in Longacre Square. In August 1902, Ochs purchased the former Eno ground from the Subway Realty Company and obtained a long-term lease from Charles Thorley on the ground under the Pabst Hotel. At the time, the first line of the New York City Subway was being constructed through the site, spurring commercial growth in the surrounding neighborhood. In deciding to relocate to Longacre Square, the Times cited the fact that the New York City Subway's Times Square station would be directly adjacent to the new building, thus allowing the paper to expand its circulation.Headquarters
In mid-1902, the Times hired architect Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz to draw up plans for its skyscraper headquarters at Longacre Square. Site clearing began in December 1902 and was completed within two months. Afterward, workers began constructing the building's concrete, brickwork, and ironwork in mid-1903. By the end of the year, the steel frame was being constructed at a rate of three stories per week. Ochs's 11-year-old daughter Iphigene Bertha Ochs laid the building's cornerstone on January 18, 1904, after the steel frame had been completed. Ochs successfully persuaded the New York City Board of Aldermen to rename the surrounding area after the newspaper, and Longacre Square was renamed Times Square in April 1904. Workers were installing interior finishes by the next month. Construction was temporarily halted that August when seventeen workers' unions went on strike. According to the Times, the building's completion was delayed by 299 days due to various strikes during the project, as well as inclement weather.Prior to the building's completion, in November 1904, the Times used searchlights on the facade to display the results of the 1904 United States presidential election. The Times indicated which candidate won by flashing searchlights on different sides of the building. The New York Times officially moved into the building on January 1, 1905. To help promote the new headquarters, the Times held a New Year's Eve event on December 31, 1904, welcoming the year 1905 with a fireworks display set off from the roof of the building at midnight. The event was a success, attracting 200,000 spectators, and was repeated annually through 1907. Hegeman & Company leased most of the ground level in mid-1905, opening a drug store within that space. The same year, the paper started operating a stereopticon machine on the north side of the building, displaying news bulletins. In addition, the Times experimented with transmitting music and telephone messages to the top of its tower in 1907.
In 1908, Ochs replaced the fireworks display with the lowering of a lit ball down the building's flagpole at midnight, patterned off the use of time balls to indicate a certain time of day. By then, the New York City government had banned the fireworks displays, which were detonated directly over the crowd and, thus, posed a danger. The "ball drop" was directly inspired by a time ball atop the Western Union Telegraph Building in lower Manhattan. By then, Times Square had become a popular venue for New Year's celebrations. The ball drop is still held atop One Times Square, attracting an average of one million spectators yearly. The Times Tower was also used for telegraph experiments, and its searchlights continued to display election results, including those for the 1908 United States presidential election. The building's roof attracted visitors such as French author Pierre Loti, who called the Times Tower "one of the boldest" of New York City's skyscrapers, and Jamalul Kiram II, the Sultan of Sulu.
''Times'' relocation and office use
There was so little space on the Times Tower site that its mechanical basements had to descend as much as. By the early 1910s, the Times Square area had become densely developed with restaurants, theaters, hotels, and office buildings. Despite the dearth of space, a Times booklet said: "It did not occur to anyone to suggest that the should desert Times Square." On February 2, 1913, eight years after it moved to One Times Square, the Times moved its corporate headquarters to 229 West 43rd Street, where it remained until 2007. Most of the Times operations quickly moved to the annex, except for the publishing and subscription divisions. The Times retained ownership of the Times Tower and leased out the former space there. The building continued to be popularly known as the Times Tower for half a century.The original Times Square Ball above the Times Tower was replaced following the 1919–1920 New Year's celebrations. A neon beacon was installed atop the Times Tower's roof in September 1928. An electromechanical Motograph News Bulletin news ticker, colloquially known as the "zipper", started operating near the base of the building on November 6, 1928, after eight weeks of installation. The zipper originally consisted of 14,800 light bulbs, with the display controlled by a chain conveyor system inside the building; individual letter elements were loaded into frames to spell out news headlines. As the frames moved along the conveyor, the letters themselves triggered electrical contacts which lit the external bulbs. The first headline displayed on the zipper announced Herbert Hoover's victory in that day's presidential election. The zipper was used to display other major news headlines of the era, and its content later expanded to include sports and weather updates as well.
During the 1940s, the building's basement contained a shooting range occupied by the Forty-third Street Rifle Club. Due to restrictions imposed during World War II, the Times Tower's zipper was powered down in May 1942, marking the first time since its installation that the zipper had shut down. The tower's lights were darkened for the same reason. Consequently, the 1942 New York state election was the first since 1904 for which the tower's lights did not broadcast any election results. The Times reactivated the building's zipper in October 1943, but, less than two weeks later, the sign was again deactivated to reduce electricity usage. The sign operated intermittently until the end of World War II, when it again ran continuously. On the evening of August 14, 1945, the building's zipper announced Japan's surrender in World War II to a packed crowd in Times Square.
Ahead of the 1952 United States presidential election, the Times temporarily installed a electronic sign on the 4th through 11th stories of the northern facade, displaying each candidate's electoral vote count. The sign was reinstalled on the Times Tower during the 1956 United States presidential election. The tower's ball was also replaced after the 1954–1955 celebrations. The New York Community Trust installed a plaque outside the building in 1957, designating it as a point of interest and an unofficial "landmark".