Times Square NYE

This year an anticipated 1 million people are expected to watch the ball drop in Times Square, nee Longacre Square. Here's how it all got started.

From HuffPo...

The first New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square occurred in 1904, just after the New York Times had relocated to a new building in what had been known as Longacre Square. Publisher Alfred Ochs had successfully pushed for a renaming of the district, and the triangular area where the new building sat at the intersection of 7th Avenue, Broadway, and 42nd Streets has since then been known as Times Square.

That year Ochs sponsored a party to beat all parties to celebrate the new location. An all-day street festival was capped off with a fireworks display, and there were thought to have been 200,000 people in attendance. The Times continued to sponsor a New Year's Eve event in the area, and New Yorkers soon began going to Times Square instead of ringing in the new year at Trinity Church as had been the previous custom...

...The first ball made for Times Square (for NYE 1907) was iron and wood and weighed 700 pounds; it featured light from one hundred 25-watt light bulbs. It was made by an immigrant metalworker whose company, Artkraft Strauss, took responsibility for the creation and dropping of the ball for most of the 20th century.

How times (and Times Square) have changed.