Times Square In The 1970s
By | February 16, 2022
1st April 1970: A sex shop featuring peep shows, and the McAuley missionary sit side by side at 42nd street and Dyer avenue in Times Square, New York. (Photo by Walter Leporati/Getty Images)
Times Square got its start as Longacre Square when it was the site of William H. Vanderbilt’s American Horse Exchange; at the time, the large open space was surrounded by apartments. With the introduction of electricity, and other changes, traffic began to increase, and Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of
The New York Times from 1896 to 1935, decided to build the Times Tower there, between Broadway and Seventh Avenue and 42nd and 43rd Streets. By
World War I, Times Square was attracting most of the legitimate theaters, as well as restaurants like the Astor and the Knickerbocker. With the expansion of public transportation, Times Square grew dramatically and became the hub of the city. Unfortunately, the Great Depression changed this; theaters closed and “grinder” houses that showed sexually explicit films opened. This was followed by the opening of burlesque shows, peep shows, dance halls, and penny arcades. Prostitution proliferated the neighborhood, and it became the place for soldiers on leave to seek out erotic entertainment; conditions would only continue to deteriorate until they reached their low point in the 1970s.
Picture of 42nd Street from 1949, before the decay of the 1970s. Source: (Library of Congress).
By 1960, It Already Had A Bad Reputation
The 1950s and ‘60s only made things worse, although there were failed efforts in the 1950s to thwart the advance of sex-related businesses. A front-page article in The New York Times in 1960 called the area “the worst in town” in 1960, detailing the vices of Times Square: vandalism, loitering, stores selling knives and sexually explicit materials, and, of course, grindhouse theaters.
In 1966, the twenty-five-cent peep show was introduced, and this simply helped to support the seediness of the area. When the economy crashed in the early 1970s, many businesses left Times Square. Retail establishments closed and the hotels were converted into SRO (single-room occupancy) dwellings which attracted the destitute. Although the Theater District did survive, it was surrounded by strip clubs and porn cinemas
Source: (CinemaTreasures.org).
The Seediness Was Right Out In The Open
The area was rife with con games, open drug trade, and alcoholism. Despite the large numbers of police officers, crime flourished in the subway and underground passages of the Port Authority Bus Terminal. By the end of the 1970s, the most felony and crime complaints were recorded in Times Square. During this time, 42nd Street got the nickname “the Deuce” and Eighth Avenue became known as the Minnesota Strip because of the number of prostitutes who walked it. So-called hot-sheet hotels such as the Elk charged hourly rates as low as $5 an hour (or you could rent a single room for the night for $40). These hotels had no phones, televisions, or air conditioning and had communal bathrooms.
Source: (Leland Bobbé/Dangerous Minds).
A Lot Of Money Changed Hands
In 1981, Rolling Stone called West 42nd Street the “sleaziest block in America.” People exchanged money, drugs, and other payment for sexual favors, as the central location helped to fuel the sex market. Because of the traffic, clients were able to solicit prostitutes without attracting much attention. There was, of course, a lot of money to be made from these activities. For example, the weekly gross of peep shows in 1978 was estimated to range between $74,000 to $106,000 by CUNY researchers. That’s not to say that it was all bad; in the 1970s, Jimmy Glenn opened the Times Square Boxing Club and TKTS got its start selling same-day Broadway tickets. There were also people trying to turn Times Square around, including the WAP (Women Against Pornography) and the Guardian Angels, who were a group of volunteers that was founded in 1979 to combat the violence on the subways.
Source: (National Archives and Records Administration/All that's Interesting).
Everything Started To Change In The 1980s
The conditions at Times Square began to turn around in 1983 when Mayor Ed Koch promised $1.6 billion to help redevelop Times Square and rid the area of prostitution and drugs. By August of that year, arrests in Times Square had tripled, and by the end of the year, 17,000 sex workers had been arrested. In 1985, the city promised to hire 1,000 additional police officers, spending $50 million. By the ‘90s, Times Square had begun to be transformed once again.
