Herald Square is without doubt the busiest square in the city after its more famous bigger brother, Times Square. In essence it is an intersection where north-south Broadway and Sixth Avenue meet the east-west 34th Street. The square was named after the New York Herald newspaper, New York's most distributed at one point, which operated between 1835 and 1924. Formally, it consists of two sections: Herald Square from 35th to 33rd Streets; and Greeley Square from 33rd to 32nd Streets. However, in the minds of New Yorkers, the entire stretch between 35th and 32nd is known as Herald Square. In fact, if observed from above or on a city map, Herald Square presents itself in the form of a bowtie with Broadway and Sixth Avenue splitting each other in the middle.
The square is dominated by middle-range shopping malls such as E. J. Korvette, Stern's, Abraham & Straus, J. C. Penny, the Manhattan Mall and the legendary Macy's. Each December, in the pre-Christmas period, during working hours, the area is inundated with shoppers who devise intricate strategies for getting in and out of the square, and traffic also becomes unbearable, especially if the streets are covered with snow. In other parts of the year the square is a popular stage for street performers, as well as a place where startup enterprises, small and large, launch their products.
The New York Herald newspaper was housed in a building that stood at the southern side of the square, in front of Greeley Square, which is actually a little park with trees, flowerbeds and benches. Paradoxically, Horace Greeley, after whom the park is named and whose statue stands there, was the founder and editor of the New York Tribune, the Herald's main rival at the turn of the century. The two newspapers merged into what became the New York Herald Tribune, which operated until 1966, when the New York Times became the city's leading newspaper.
Such is the concept of Herald Square: one of intersecting, crossing, joining, outmaneuvering, outdoing. A perfect display of the New York City entrepreneurial spirit.