Another important link in the chain of events that helped create Times Square was the birth of the American urban tourist in the early twentieth century. During this time, cities became aware of themselves as tourist attractions, and effectively turned it into a flourishing business.

Many tourists visiting New York were drawn specifically to and stimulated by business, by merchandisers, both as a consumer and a visitor. In the late 19th century, Americans had learned from the well-organized Swiss, who welcomed over three million visitors each year, how to become successful hosts. Switzerland's prosperity was based on the self-conscious development of foreign tourism, which had been turned into a distinct profession.7

The fierce competition among the American cities to host the Columbian Exposition of 1893, indicated awareness of the economic benefits that could be obtained by the winner. The Columbian Exposition demonstrated as one of the first in the US, a tight co-ordination between hotelkeepers, railroad managers, publishers and city officials to ensure that a huge mass of visitors could be moved around, housed, fed and entertained in an efficient as well as a profitable manner.8

Meanwhile, a world-wide "competition of capitals" was taking place, and the great fairs temporarily provided a landscape worthy of comparison with the great European capitals. Urban planners promoted that urban beautification could benefit behavior, civic pride, political morals, real estate values, business efficiency, and tourism. The City Beautiful movement ensued, and many cities turned to the serious business of creating a permanent exposition of civic structures, museums, and public squares. 9 In his presentation of his 1909 Chicago Plan, Daniel Burnham noted that "People from all over the world visit and linger in Paris. No matter where they make their money, they go there to spend it. . . . The cream of our earnings should be spent here . . . while the city should become a magnet, drawing to us those who wish to enjoy life." He continued to say that "our own people will become home-keepers, and the stranger will seek our gates."10

New York, in the 1890s, was already the most visited place in the country, containing numerous 'places of interest.' The Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the city's great park that held two major museums and a zoo, had all appeared within the last two decades. New York hosted and exploited several mass-celebrations starting from 1885, attracting millions of visitors. The city increasingly became a center for conventions, trade associations, and shopping trips. The city became dominated by strangers, stirring up a mixture of reactions from New Yorkers. Some tourists headed for the traditional uplifting sights -- museums, monuments, parks, churches, and libraries. But many more were drawn to the city's pleasure zones. Critics worried about the experiences of these tourists, and complained about the wrong image that New York might suffer. A whole market evolved around the rich visitors, who could afford lavish tips and high prices. However, "The stranger's New York is a surface New York," a writer for Outlook magazine noted.11 This was a comfort that even the humblest New Yorker could take, who was locked out by the lavish pleasures, but was knowledgeable and blasé about things that took the breath away of the ill-behaved out-of-towners.

The Times Square area, or the Tenderloin as it was more commonly known in the early 1900s, was viewed as an expensive, isolated tourist center congested with nightclubs, theatres, hotels, and restaurants. Robert Shackleton wrote that the average tourist was probably respectable enough at his home in some distant city, "but on Broadway he is likely to get a fifty cent cigar between his teeth and fling extravagant tips, and become arrogant and boastful, and make it clear 'he has the price.' It is this class of men who, inviting and receiving the attentions of swindlers and robbers and sharpers, gets into police courts and gives New York more of a reputation for wickedness than it deserves." Shackleton noted that "A great part of the people who move along the 'Great White Way' are not New Yorkers, but visitors,"12 while Harper's Weekly had pointed out that the so-called New York theatre audience was not local at all. Contemporary journalist Julian Street wrote a series of articles on the Tenderloin, and remarked that the natives looked "with pity and amusement at those who are not of it." He continued to say that "They [the visitors] stare at New York as a New Yorker stares at Coney Island. For New York is, after all, the Coney Island of the nation."13