Ripley’s Returns to Times Square
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The revitalization of Times Square abounds — believe it.
The latest addition to family entertainment comes to Midtown on June 21, when a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Odditorium will open at 234 W. 42nd St.
This relic-filled attraction marks a return to Times Square for Ripley’s, a historian of side shows, Todd Robbins, said. It first had a museum at 48th Street and Broadway in 1939, and then one on the site of the Marriott Marquis Hotel between 1957 and 1972.
Adjacent to Madame Tussaud’s, the Ripley’s attraction will have 18,000 square feet and feature a lock of President Kennedy’s hair, a meteorite from 1529, and a “giant slab” from the Berlin Wall, the general manager of Ripley’s Times Square, James O’Shea, said. The Orlando-based company Ripley Entertainment Inc. has 30 museums worldwide, with one set to open in India later this year.
“42nd Street has always been about entertainment,” the president of the Times Square Alliance, Tim Tompkins, said. He cited booming tourism, Broadway’s strong ticket sales, and development such as the Bank of America building rising at Sixth Avenue. “All in all, it’s really popping,” he said.
The Times Square Alliance has found that Times Square takes in $53 billion annually, a figure more than the economies of Bolivia and Panama combined.
