The home of the New Year’s Eve ball—One Times Square—started out as the headquarters of the Times; it displayed early illuminated billboards and the famous news ticker. New Yorker staffers have made numerous trips to the building. A 1961 Talk of the Town story reported that “there was a time when a speakeasy was going full blast in one of the basements … and when the F.B.I.—this was during the Second World War—was holding pistol practice in a basement and using a seventh floor office to trap German spies.”
via Video: Inside the Home of the New Year’s Eve Ball : The New Yorker.
