New York City hosted the first modern New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square in 1904. The event was organized by the New York Times to celebrate the opening of its new headquarters in the area then known as Longacre Square.
The celebration featured fireworks at midnight, and the public response was so strong that the city continued organizing New Year's events there. In 1905, fireworks again marked the occasion, but safety restrictions soon made that approach impractical.
In 1907, the newspaper introduced the first Times Square Ball, lowered from the flagpole atop One Times Square. That ball drop replaced the fireworks and established the ceremony that remains internationally famous.
The 1904 event is sometimes called the first ball drop, but that is incorrect: the ball did not appear until 1907. The 1904 milestone is the first major Times Square New Year's Eve celebration, while the ball-drop tradition began three years later.