Everything about Broadway New York City totally explained
Broadway, as the name implies, is a wide avenue in
New York City. While New York has several other Broadways, in the context of the city it usually refers to the
Manhattan street. It is the oldest north-south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to the first
New Amsterdam settlement. The
name Broadway is an English
translation of the
Dutch name,
Breede weg. A stretch of Broadway is famous as the pinnacle of the
American theater industry.
History
Broadway originated as a
Native American trail, called the Wickquasgeck Trail, which was carved into the brush land of Manhattan. This trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island. Upon the arrival of the
Dutch, the trail soon became the main road through the island from New Amsterdam at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur
David de Vries gives the first mention of it in his journal for the year 1642 ("the Wickquasgeck Road over which the Indians passed daily"). The Dutch named the road "Heerestraat". In the 18th century Broadway ended at the town commons north of Wall Street, where
Eastern Post Road continued through the
East Side and Bloomingdale Road the west side of the island. In the late 19th century the widened and paved part of Bloomingdale Road north of Columbus Circle was called "The Boulevard" but at the end of the century the whole old road (the Bloomingdale Road and what was previously called Broadway) was renamed Broadway.
Route
Broadway runs the length of Manhattan Island, from
Bowling Green at the south, to
Inwood at the northern tip of the island. South of
Columbus Circle, it's a one-way southbound street; through traffic is blocked at
Times Square, where it's prevented from crossing
Seventh Avenue directly. From the northern shore of Manhattan, it crosses
Spuyten Duyvil Creek via the
Broadway Bridge and continues through
Marble Hill (a discontinuous portion of the borough of Manhattan) and
the Bronx into
Westchester County. US 9 continues to be known as Broadway through its junction with
NY 117.
Diagonally crossing the
Commissioners' Plan of 1811 of Manhattan streets, its intersections with avenues have been marked by "
squares" (some merely triangular slivers of open space) and induced some interesting architecture, such as the famous
Flatiron Building.
The section of lower Broadway from its origin at Bowling Green to City Hall Park is the historical location for the city's
ticker-tape parades, and is sometimes called the "
Canyon of Heroes" during such events. West of Broadway as far as
Canal Street was the city's fashionable residential area until circa 1825; landfill has more than tripled the area and the Hudson shore now lies far to the west, beyond
TriBeCa and
Battery Park City.
Broadway marks the east boundary of
Greenwich Village, passing
Astor Place. It is a short walk from there to
New York University near
Washington Square Park, which is at the foot of
Fifth Avenue. A bend in front of
Grace Church allegedly avoids an earlier tavern; from 10th Street it begins its long diagonal course across Manhattan, headed almost due North.
At
Union Square, Broadway crosses
14th Street and continues its diagonal uptown course from the Square's northwest corner.
At
Madison Square, Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue at
23rd Street.
At
Herald Square, Broadway crosses
Sixth Avenue (the Avenue of the Americas).
Macy's Department Store is located on the western corner of Herald Square; it's one of the largest
department stores in the world, if not the single largest.
One famous stretch near
Times Square, where Broadway crosses Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan, is the home of many
Broadway theatres, housing an ever-changing array of commercial, large-scale plays, particularly
musicals. This area of Manhattan is often called the Theater District or the Great White Way, a nickname originating in the headline "Found on the Great White Way" in the
February 3 1902 edition of the
New York Evening Telegram. The journalistic
sobriquet was inspired by the millions of lights on theater
marquees and
billboard advertisements that illuminate the area.
After becoming New York's de facto
Red Light District in the 1960s and 1970s (as can be seen in the films
Taxi Driver and
Midnight Cowboy), since the late 1980s Times Square has emerged as a family tourist center, in effect being
Disneyfied following the company's purchase and renovation of the
New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street in 1993. Times Square is the location of
The New York Times, from which the Square gets its name, published at offices on West 43rd Street.
At the southwest corner of
Central Park, Broadway crosses
Eighth Avenue at
West 59th Street at
Columbus Circle, one-time home of the
New York Coliseum, a convention center and now site of a new shopping center at the foot of the new
Time Warner Center, headquarters of
Time Warner.
North of
Columbus Circle, Broadway retains planted
center islands as a vestige of the central mall of "The Boulevard" that became the spine of the
Upper West Side.
At the intersection of
Columbus Avenue and West 65th Street, Broadway passes by the
Juilliard School and
Lincoln Center, both well-known performing arts landmarks, as well as a
temple of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon or LDS Church).
At its intersection with 78th Street, Broadway shifts direction, to continue directly uptown aligned approximately with the Commissioners' grid. At the bend are The Apthorp and the
First Baptist Church in the City of New York, an historic sanctuary built in
1891. The FBC's presence in New York City dates to
1762 at a location on Gold Street.
Further north, Broadway follows the old Bloomingdale Road as the main spine of the
Upper West Side, passing the campus of
Columbia University at 116th Street in
Morningside Heights and
CUNY—City College in Harlem as it continues northwards.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital lies on Broadway near 166th, 167th, and 168th Streets in
Washington Heights. At this point, Broadway becomes part of
US 9.
Broadway crosses the
Harlem River on the
Broadway Bridge to
Marble Hill and then enters
The Bronx, where it's the eastern border of
Riverdale and the western border of
Van Cortlandt Park. After leaving New York City, it's the main north-south street of
Yonkers, New York.
Public transit
From south to north, Broadway at one point or another runs over or under the
IRT Lexington Avenue Line, the
BMT Broadway Line, the
IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, and the
IND Eighth Avenue Line :
Early
street railways on Broadway included the Broadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad's Broadway and University Place Line (1864?) between
Union Square (
14th Street) and
Times Square (
42nd Street), the Ninth Avenue Railroad's
Ninth and Amsterdam Avenues Line (1884) between 65th Street and 71st Street, the Forty-second Street, Manhattanville and St. Nicholas Avenue Railway's
Broadway Branch Line (1885?) between Times Square and
125th Street, and the Kingsbridge Railway's Kingsbridge Line north of 169th Street. The Broadway Surface Railroad's
Broadway Line, a
cable car line, opened on lower Broadway (below Times Square) in 1893, and soon became the core of the
Metropolitan Street Railway, with two cable branches: the
Broadway and Lexington Avenue Line and
Broadway and Columbus Avenue Line.
These streetcar lines were replaced with
bus routes in the 1930s and 1940s. Before Broadway became one-way, the main bus routes along it were the
New York City Omnibus Company's (NYCO)
6 (Broadway below Times Square),
7 (Broadway and Columbus Avenue), and
11 (Ninth and Amsterdam Avenues), and the
Surface Transportation Corporation's
M100 (Kingsbridge) and
M104 (Broadway Branch). Additionally, the
Fifth Avenue Coach Company's (FACCo)
4 and
5 used Broadway from
135th Street north to Washington Heights, and their 5 and
6 used Broadway between
57th Street and
72nd Street. With the implementation of one-way traffic, the northbound 6 and 7 were moved to
Sixth Avenue.
As of 2007, Broadway is now served by the
M1 (used
Lafayette Street until that became one-way),
M4 (ex-FACCo 4),
M5 (ex-FACCo 5),
M6 (ex-NYCO 6),
M7 (ex-NYCO 7),
M100, and
M104. Other routes that use part of Broadway include the
M10,
M20,
M27,
M60,
Bx7, and
Bx20.
Great White Way
Great White Way is a nickname for a section of
Broadway in the
Midtown section of the
New York City borough of
Manhattan, specifically the portion that encompasses the
Theatre District, between
42nd and
53rd Streets. Nearly a mile of Broadway was illuminated in 1880 by
Brush arc lamps, making it among the first electrically lighted streets in the United States.
The headline "Found on the Great White Way" appeared in the
February 3,
1902, edition of the
New York Evening Telegram. The journalistic
sobriquet was inspired by the millions of lights on theater
marquees and
billboard advertisements that illuminate the area, especially around
Times Square.
Modern traffic flow
Broadway was once a two-way street for its entire length. The present status, in which it runs
one-way southbound south of
Columbus Circle (
59th Street), came about in several stages. First, on
June 6,
1954,
Seventh Avenue became southbound and
Eighth Avenue became northbound south of Broadway. None of Broadway became one-way, but the increased southbound traffic between Columbus Circle (Eighth Avenue) and
Times Square (Seventh Avenue) caused the city to restripe that section of Broadway for four southbound and two northbound lanes. Broadway became one-way from Columbus Circle south to
Herald Square (
34th Street) on
March 10,
1957, in conjunction with
Sixth Avenue becoming one-way from Herald Square north to 59th Street and Seventh Avenue becoming one-way from 59th Street south to
Times Square (where it crosses Broadway). On
June 3,
1962, Broadway became one-way south of
Canal Street, with
Trinity Place and
Church Street carrying northbound traffic. Another change was made on
November 10,
1963, when Broadway became one-way southbound from Herald Square to
Madison Square (
23rd Street) and
Union Square (
14th Street) to Canal Street, and two routes -
Sixth Avenue south of Herald Square and
Centre Street,
Lafayette Street, and
Fourth Avenue south of Union Square - became one-way northbound. Finally, at the same time as
Madison Avenue became one-way northbound and
Fifth Avenue became one-way southbound, Broadway was made one-way southbound between Madison Square (where Fifth Avenue crosses) and Union Square on
January 14,
1966, completing its conversion south of Columbus Circle.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Broadway New York City'.
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