The Times Square of today, with its glass and glare, its polished granite benches and scarlet stairs, is the product of a protracted rescue operation.

In 1979, Madonna arrived in New York and told a cabbie to take her “to the middle of everything.” He dropped her at Times Square. By the 1960s, the area had became synonymous with sleaze. From the Civil War to the 1990s, from the slaughterhouses along the East River to the rail yards by the Hudson, this stretch of pavement, pounded by hookers, con men, addicts, and pickpockets, knitted together the most distasteful parts of urban life. But even in its heyday of glamour, 42nd Street had a reputation for sordidness.

The building, on Broadway at 48th Street, anchored a row of luxury automotive companies whose showrooms rivaled couturiers for chic. In 1902, Studebaker, a carriage company that had nimbly retooled for the horseless kind, put up a ten-story factory with offices just off what was then called Longacre Square. But at the turn of the 20th century, it was ground zero of car culture. These days, Times Square is perpetually clotted with pedestrians rushing to theater seats and office cubicles or ambling in an LED-ened daze. When you think about it, 42nd Street isn’t just the epicenter of spectacle but also a boulevard of noble ambitions. And half a dozen blocks east of the New York Public Library, diplomats from all over the world convene to hammer out intractable conflicts, not with weaponry but by sitting around a conference table and talking. On 42nd Street, the curious can enter one of the world’s great research libraries and dive into virtually any published book.

Charity workers (at the Ford Foundation) tried to staunch the world’s worst ills, and a global financial institution (Bank of America) erected what was then the world’s greenest skyscraper. This is where the press (the Daily News, the Herald Tribune, the Times, and The New Yorker) has continuously tested the limits of the First Amendment, where pedestrians have reclaimed civic space from cars and dereliction (in Times Square), and where doctors tended to wounded veterans (the Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled, which once existed between First and Second Avenues). Even its roster of vanished landmarks is a testament to loftiness. This has long been New York’s most idealistic street, where fine instincts and modern technology fuse into a boulevard of high-minded civic aspiration.

What is 42nd street famous for