The billboards in New York City's Times Square might be iconic, but they also might not be legal. Dan Lewis of Now I Know pointed out this week that, under the constraints of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 and its most recent update in May 2012, Times Square's bright lights and mile-high billboards aren't kosher.
The law aims to keep advertisements from inundating roads and becoming too large or distracting. The point, as the law's name so aptly puts it, is to keep America beautiful. Under the law, billboard sizes are limited to 1,200 square feet, which, The Smithsonian notes, is "smaller than many of the signs that cluster about the sidewalks in Times Square."
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