The first electrified advertisement came to Times Square in 1904, on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The lights became brighter and more abundant from there, and today it would be hard to recognize the area without glowing and flashing advertisements taking up every square inch of space:
Courtesy of Reddit, here's a GIF showing Times Square quickly transform into stripped-down ad-free zone:
Now someone needs to make a GIF showing pre-Giuliani Times Square compared to now.
