Is Herald Square Becoming Times Square?

No desnudas yet. Photo: Gordon Donovan/NurPhoto/Shutterstock Herald Square is already a circus for the four weeks between the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas, and soon it may get actual carnival rides. The local business-improvement district has put out a call for proposals, and there is talk of Ferris wheels and arcade games, per The City Reporter. It’s in line with the continuing effort to pedestrianize the area, which began in earnest during the Bloomberg administration. Today, the strip of Broadway in front of Macy’s is closed to cars, and Broadway for a few blocks to the north and south of 34th Street is heavily traffic-restricted with significant space given over to café tables, bike racks, and the like. As is, of course, Times Square, pedestrianized (to much shouting) in stages from 2009 to 2017. About half of the bow tie is traffic-free with most cars channeled through on Seventh Avenue. It is a triumph of urbanism, well regarded except along the Fran Lebowitz–Patti LuPone axis of crabbiness. If you need to head up Broadway on foot from the mid-20s to the upper 40s, you can, with a few swerves, do so without setting foot on the sidewalk. Herald Square and Times Square are rapidly becoming one district, and a few curbside tourist attractions will only contribute to their unification. The bright LED boards around 34th and Seventh, presumably aimed at Penn Station commuters, suggest the same. So did the unexecuted plan to put tennis courts around the corner, on the site of the demolished Hotel Pennsylvania, in advance of the soon-to-come PENN15. Times Square will soon get a ride of its own in the form of the thrill drop atop the Torch, in addition to the experiential stuff that’s just now opening at One Times Square. It had a Ferris wheel for a while, too. What will need to be managed, most assuredly, are the crowds. New Yorkers all know to avoid Times Square unless they’re going to the theater because the sidewalks are nearly impassable on a pleasant day. The situation on 34th Street by Macy’s is more specific to the holiday-shopping season, but I can tell you (from firsthand local experience) that it is, if anything, even more intense. It’s made worse by the lines of street vendors selling souvenirs and other assorted merchandise, whose hustle I respect but who really shouldn’t be obstructing as much foot traffic as they do. I recall a day a few years ago when the sidewalk on 34th near Sixth Avenue was filled to a near standstill — we were borderline immobile, barely shuffling along — and a man in a wheelchair was only able to move by pushing backward extremely slowly through the crowd, taking several minutes to go perhaps 50 feet. Because his sitting position put him at maybe half the height of the surrounding people, he risked having someone fall atop him at any moment. It was horrifying. That said, if we can manage the jam-up, there is potential for it to become a highly urban space that works in multiple ways, one local shoppers can tolerate and tourists will love. One giant midtown entertainment strip may lie in our very near future, something like 30 blocks long and with gelaterias in abundance. (The prospect of one extended strolling-and-sitting district along Broadway came up when I wrote about 14th Street’s overhaul last year.) Once combined, it will need a new name. Does it get a portmanteau, something like Therald Square? Or here’s a modest proposal: Let’s hyphenate the two and bring back into view an ancient and sadly defunct urban rivalry. Times Square, so named because it was home to the New York Times, can once again go toe to toe with Herald Square, named for the New York Herald, a paper merged into the Herald Tribune in 1924 and shut down in 1966. A press battle! Except that one’s dead and the other’s now on Eighth Avenue. Is Herald Square Becoming Times Square? Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale. Manage preferences.