Why was Times Square called Lansdowne Square?

Answer 1

It wasn't called Lansdowne Square. It was called Longacre Square. Why? I don't know.

Around 1878 the section of Broadway and 7th Avenue in Manhattan was the city's carriage-trade center, and was then known as Longacre Square -- Longacre being the carriage center in London. In a couple of decades, theaters would begin moving into the Longacre Square area from their old center at Union Square, and the carriage trade would greatly suffer from the advent of the "horseless carriage." In 1904 Longacre Square was officially renamed Times Square, after the New York Times Building, that became the cornerstone of the new district.