#195 Midnight in Times Square: New Year's Eve in New York City

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2015

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we look back on the one day of the year that New Yorkers look forward. New Years Eve is the one night that millions of people around the world focus their attentions on New York City -- or more specifically, on the wedge shaped building in Times Square wearing a bright, illuminated ball on its rooftop. In the 19th century, the ringing-in of the New Year was celebrated with gatherings near Trinity Church and a pleasant New Years Day custom of visiting young women in their parlors. But when the New York Times decided to celebrate the opening of their new offices -- in the plaza that would take the name Times Square -- a new tradition was born. Tens of millions have visited Times Square over the years, gazing up to watch the electric ball drop, a time-telling mechanism taken from the maritime tradition. The event has been affected by world events -- from Prohibition to World War II -- and changed by the introduction of radio and television broadcasts. ALSO: What happened to the celebration which it reached the gritty 1970s and a Times Square with a surly reputation? PLUS: A few tips for those of you heading to the New Years Eve celebration this year! www.boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys Episode 195, midnight in Times Square, New York on New Year's Eve.
0:07.0	Hey, it's The Bowry Boys.
0:10.0	Hey!
0:11.0	Support for The Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:14.0	Join us for as little as $1 a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:21.0	Hi there, welcome to The Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:26.0	And this is Tom Myers.
0:28.0	Tonight we are going to place our focus on perhaps the one day of the year that people outside of the city
0:35.0	direct their attention onto New York City.
0:38.0	That day is December 31st, the celebration of New Year's Eve.
0:43.0	New Year's Eve in New York is an event that draws hundreds of thousands of cheering attendees
0:48.0	to the block surrounding Times Square.
0:51.0	And millions more, as spectators watch from home via their television,
0:55.0	I saw a statistic that an estimated one billion people watch the big celebration on TV.
1:02.0	Millions and millions of people around the world focus their attention on New York,
1:07.0	although a lot of other major cities, of course, have huge parties,
1:10.0	especially London and Melbourne and many others.
1:13.0	There's something about the way that the tradition has started in Times Square
1:16.0	that makes it kind of a unique custom worldwide.
1:20.0	In today's show, we're going to talk about, of course, the origins of the Times Square celebration.
1:25.0	But we're also going to talk about what happened at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve
1:30.0	before Times Square even existed.
	...

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