The Lincoln Highway, conceived in 1913 as America's first transcontinental highway, used the portion of 42nd Street west of Times Square, on the way to the Weehawken Ferry to Weehawken, New Jersey, where it continued for 3389 miles across the country to San Francisco.

The former Longacre Square was renamed to honor The New York Times which established its offices and printing plant nearby. For a long period in the mid 20th century, the area of 42nd Street near Times Square was home to peep shows and other activities often considered unsavory. A comedian once said, "They call it 42nd Street because you're not safe if you spend more than forty seconds on it."

A popular 1933 movie musical named 42nd Street, set in pre-Depression Manhattan, colorfully described the bawdy mixture of Broadway shows and prostitution during the early 20th century. In 1980, it was turned into a successful Broadway musical, which was revived in 2001 in a theater that was itself on 42nd Street. In the late 1990s, city government encouraged a clean-up of the Times Square area. The block of 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues again became home to a "legitimate" theater, along with shops and eateries that transformed the street into a showplace thronged with out-of-towners once again.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "42nd Street (Manhattan)"