Seventeen years ago, in a devastating song, Lou Reed portrayed Forty-Second Street and Times Square as the “Dirty Boulevard.” Looking at this same place today, we would have to call it “the cleaned-up boulevard.” What can we say about life on the cleaned-up boulevard? The big thing is that it isn’t as bad, as antiseptic, as suburban, as many of us feared. It’s nice to see that Rudolph Giuliani’s project of turning the keys to the city over to Disney hasn’t turned the city into Disneyland. The thrill’s not gone.

There are some really good buildings in “The New Times Square.” The best ones are the oldest, and they are live and lively theaters: the New Amsterdam, once home of the Ziegfeld Follies, now the Disney flagship, and the neo-Baroque New Victory, now a terrific avant-garde and cosmopolitan children’s theater. They keep theater crowds flowing and overflowing at the Square’s core. The best new buildings are small, like the New 42nd Street Rehearsal Studios, whose delicate li...

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