A Ball Drops in Time Square

For many nations around the world, New Year’s Eve on December 31 is a magical night of festivity, hope, tradition, and resolution. Last week Alina Rubin shared how she and her family celebrated the New Year in Kiev during the 1980’s, and today I’m taking the New Year’s celebration back to 1918 and the world-famous Times Square ball drop in New York City.

Most everyone makes big wishes and resolutions on New Year’s Eve, but 1918 was especially weighted with expectations for happier days. The four-year world war that had demolished empires, birthed new ones, and killed twenty million people was over. The Spanish Influenza—which ravaged the world twice during the year—appeared to be over, and people were shedding their masks to prove it.

Despite a waiter’s strike in the swanky restaurants located near Times Square, all signals pointed to a buoyant night of merrymaking, capped off at midnight with the drop of a 700 pound, five-feet-in-diameter, iron and wooden ball illuminated by a hundred incandescent light bulbs.

We all know the ball drop happens at Times Square—named for the New York Times newspaper—but did you know that the first ball drop was held on December 31, 1907, welcoming the year 1908? And that initially (in 1904) the Times celebrated the new year with fireworks but that a fireworks ban three years later forced the company to find a different way to thrill and entertain New Yorkers?

Times Square, 1914

In 1918, churches—including Wall Street’s Trinity Church, which hosted the city’s biggest observance before the advent of the ball drop—were packed for midnight services. While at the Hotel des Artistes on 1 West Sixty-seventh Street, more than a thousand partygoers attended the Four Arts costume ball. Closer to Times Square, the nearby hotels, restaurants, and theaters were full of locals and out-of-towners. The sold-out Columbia and Keith vaudeville theaters even gave midnight performances.

And here I’d like to share that I’ve set my BENEATH A MIDWINTER MOON short story X Marks the Spot in the (real-life) Broadway Theater, just a few blocks south of Times Square. This is where my protagonist Lily Conner performs in vaudeville as a target girl for her knife-throwing husband, Emil. I’ve set the story on New Year’s Eve 1918 because like so many other people that night Lily is making a New Year’s resolution. But not just any resolution, she’s making a resolution that could save one life and ruin another.

So that’s what Lily’s up against, but what about everyone else?

What about the American soldiers and sailors returning home from the battlefields of France? At least 3,700 soldiers were shipped into New York City the last week of December alone. These exhausted men were certainly ready to let go of the past and start over in the new year.

It seemed the city was primed for a fun night, right? But to my surprise, according to the Times, New Year’s Eve 1918 was kind of a bust. Although “thousands of soldiers and sailors line[d] up on Broadway and wait[ed] for thrills”, the crowds were not as boisterous as the wild assemblies that flooded Times Square on the world-wide “false armistice day” (November 7th, 1918) or the actual Armistice Day (November 11, 1918).

In contrast to those dates, people on New Year’s Eve seemed to watch more than participate. And the reality that men in uniform were not allowed to drink alcohol—even though wartime prohibition was six months away—definitely seemed to put a damper on the celebration.

Fortunately, the evening’s main event happened without a hitch.

As a crowd of thousands watched from the nearby streets and buildings, the ball (which was hoisted up to the building’s 70-foot flagpole by six men) began its descent at midnight. That’s right, midnight; until 1938—when the ball began to drop three seconds before midnight—the drop started at midnight and ended ten seconds later. And then the 5-foot tall signs illuminating 1919 displayed. As reported in the Times, there were no fireworks.

Amazingly, the 1918 ball drop has been animated. Which is lovely, because it’s nice to know that other history lovers are interested in when, beneath a midwinter moon, a ball drops in Times Square.

Animation screenshot via Cindy Poole on YouTube. Thanks!