The first time I stayed up until midnight — or past midnight — on New Year’s Eve was in 1980 when I was 8. I grew up on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” on ABC, and for a long time, I thought there would be nothing cooler than spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square with thousands of other people watching the ball drop to ring in a new year.
Several years ago, a friend of mine was in Times Square for New Year’s Eve for his honeymoon. He said it was miserable because he and his wife had to get there early in the day and couldn’t move without losing their spot, even to go to the bathroom. The crowds were overwhelming to them as well.
My desire to avoid crowds the older I get crushed any desire to ring in the new year in New York City, but plenty of people love to count down to midnight in the Big Apple. How did Times Square’s traditions become so big?
According to NPR, the New Year’s Eve celebrations began in Times Square in 1904, the year the former Longacre Square changed its name thanks to the opening of the New York Times headquarters there. The owner of the paper, Adolph Ochs, wanted to create a big celebration, so he threw a massive street party, complete with fireworks. The go-to destination for ringing in the new year was born.
Two years later, the city banned fireworks, so in 1907, Ochs looked for a new and exciting way to mark the new year. He turned to one of the New York Times employees for an idea.
Electrician Walter Palmer came up with the idea of dropping an iron ball based on what NPR calls “a longstanding maritime tradition of ports dropping a ball at a specific time every day, allowing ship captains to precisely adjust their navigational instruments.” The ball would way 700 pounds and feature 100 lights as it descended down a pole.
“The first New Year's Eve Ball, made of iron and wood and adorned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds,” explains the Times Square official website. “It was built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, and for most of the twentieth century the company he founded, sign maker Artkraft Strauss, was responsible for lowering the Ball.”
In 1920, Times Square switched to a wrought-iron ball, and 35 years later, a 150-pound aluminum ball replaced that ball. In the ‘80s, the “I Love New York” advertising campaign meant that red and green lights adorned the ball to make it look like a big apple. In 2007, LED lighting made the ball even more versatile and exciting.
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The current ball weighs nearly 12,000 pounds and clocks in at six feet in diameter. Over 32,000 LED lights adorn it, and the ball remains on display year-round. The ball didn’t drop in 1942 and 1943 due to wartime electricity rations, and in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic required an online-only celebration.
In 1972, popular TV host Dick Clark launched a New Year’s Eve program as a hipper, more youthful alternative to the staid programming of Guy Lombardo. Clark hosted the show until 2011, just four months before his death. He only missed two years: in 1999, when ABC preempted “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” for a day-long news program ushering in the year 2000, and in 2004 as he recovered from a stroke.
Ryan Seacrest joined Clark as a permanent co-host in 2006, and he continued hosting after Clark’s death. Interestingly enough, Seacrest’s experience growing up watching the show in metro Atlanta was similar to mine. The show is still called “Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest.”
“Each year, hundreds of thousands of people still gather around the Tower, now known as One Times Square, and wait for hours in the cold of a New York winter for the famous Ball-lowering ceremony,” the Times Square website concludes. “Thanks to satellite technology, a worldwide audience estimated at over one billion people watch the ceremony each year. The lowering of the Ball has become the world's symbolic welcome to the New Year.”
The impact of New Year’s Eve in Times Square is undeniable. Whether you’re there in person or watching it on television, the celebration has become an integral part of New Year’s Eve in America.
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