Broadway (New York City thoroughfare)

Broadway is a street in New York City, New York. The thoroughfare is older than the United States of America, having been a Native American trail before European explorers arrived on the island of Manhattan during the sixteenth century. The Dutch widened it near their settlements, and its traffic increased significantly as New York grew.

Broadway is known as a mecca for theater lovers, because it is the heart of New York's Theatre District. It is also a well-known cultural symbol and has been celebrated in song and film.

One of the longest streets in the world, Broadway stretches about twenty-nine miles, from Bowling Green at the south of Manhattan north to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County, New York. In the city, fifteen miles of the street cuts through the Financial District, SoHo, Midtown, the Upper West Side, and the Bronx. North of the Bronx, Broadway extends an additional eighteen miles. It eventually becomes US9 and extends nearly to the Canadian border.

Background

Prior to 1524, Manhattan was inhabited only by the Lenape people. They called it Manahatta, which means "hilly island." Migrant birds stopped in the marshes, and fish and shellfish lived in the waterways and the estuary off the coast of Lower Manhattan. The island offered game, as well as fruits and nuts, and the Lenape of Manahatta traded with other native people over land and along the Hudson River.

Many of those who traveled from Europe to North America were seeking goods for trade. Furs, for example, were wildly popular among the wealthy, but many fur animals had been trapped nearly to extinction. Beaver fur, for example, was sought after in Europe. After explorers discovered the abundance of beavers in the Manahatta area, the Lenape began trading furs and other goods with Europeans. The Dutch arrived and began settling in Lower Manhattan in 1624. This was the beginning of the Lenape people's loss of territory. The Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam prospered.

The Lenape had long used a series of trails on the island as trade routes. The main trail ran from the south of the island, in modern Battery Park, north to Boston, Massachusetts. The northern parts of this trail were used by other native people. On Manhattan, the Lenape called it the Wickquasgeck Trail. The Dutch called it Brede Straat, which means "wide (or broad) street," and used it as well. The Dutch widened part of the trail to make it a road into Fort Amsterdam at the south of the island, near the East and North Rivers. This is the modern location of the National Museum of the American Indian in the Alexander Hamilton US Custom House, which is just across the street from Battery Park. By some accounts, they called this stretch of the road de Heere Straat, or "the Gentlemen's Street." The British took control of Manhattan in 1664 and renamed Brede Straat, calling it Broadway.

While the Wickquasgeck Trail first skirted through forests and swampland, over time settlers established farms on the island. New York City crept northward. Gradually the farms disappeared as increasing numbers of buildings went up, including country homes for the wealthy. The area that eventually became the Theatre District was still mostly farmland during the 1860s.

Overview

The modern street faithfully follows the original trail south of 23rd Street. Farther north, in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan (between 155th Street and Dyckman Street), Broadway also follows the Wickquasgeck Trail. Between these areas, the street diverged from the natural ridge that the Native Americans followed. Broadway in this stretch is located to the west of the original trail, closer to the Hudson River.

New York City did not develop its reputation as a world capital in theater until the middle of the eighteenth century. Before that time, a number of performance spaces dotted the city. The first true venue, the Theatre on Nassau Street, was built in 1732 and operated for about two decades. Theaters were popular around New York not only for the performances taking place on the stage but also for illicit activities upstairs. Police ignored dens of prostitution that were established on the upper floors.

By the 1820s, large venues such as Niblo's Garden offered much more than stage performances. Niblo's, which could seat up to three thousand patrons in its theater, also included a hotel and saloon, as well as extensive gardens in which patrons strolled between gazebos where string quartets played.

Theaters and other venues were hazardous places during much of the nineteenth century. The stages were illuminated using gaslights. Flammable wooden staging was protected from these open flames by only glass panes, tin, or wooden boxes, and any fire could quickly consume a structure. Gas flames also made buildings hot, and a theater filled with people could become sweltering in a short time. With Thomas Edison's invention of the incandescent lightbulb (it was patented in 1880), New York—and other American cities—changed rapidly. New York's theaters quickly adopted electric lights, and by the 1890s, almost all of the gaslights were gone.

Electricity literally changed the face of the city as well. Broadway was one of the first streets in the United States to be lit with electricity. The first electrically lit billboard was erected over Madison Square—at Broadway, 5th Avenue, and 23rd Street—in 1892. Although the sign touted real estate, theater owners took notice. They quickly began erecting enormous spectaculars—billboards with complex and even animated light displays. Some of these advertisements were a block long and a dozen stories tall. These impressive displays led to a new nickname for Broadway, the Great White Way.

The Theatre District in Midtown Manhattan is between West 40th Street and West 54th Street and from Sixth Avenue to Eighth Avenue. It includes many theaters as well as hotels, restaurants, Times Square, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The Theatre District is a major tourism draw for the city. Despite the allure of the Broadway address, only a few theaters are located on Broadway itself.

Bibliography

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Golding, Jennifer. "The History Behind 5 NYC Street Names." New York Daily News, 16 Sept. 2015, www.nydailynews.com/life-style/history-behind-5-nyc-street-names-article-1.2363222. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

Harris, Alexandra, editor. Manahatta to Manhattan: Native Americans in Lower Manhattan. Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, 2010, nmai.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/education/Manahatta‗to‗manhattan.pdf. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

"History of the Theater District." Spotlight on Broadway, www.spotlightonbroadway.com/broadway-history. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

O'Riordain, Aoife. "The Best Way to Cut Through the Big Apple." Independent, www.independent.co.uk/travel/americas/the-best-way-to-cut-through-the-big-apple-8100508.html. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

Rusie, Robert. "Broadway 101: The History of the Great White Way." Talkin' Broadway, www.talkinbroadway.com/bway101/1.html. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

"Theater District." NYC.com, www.nyc.com/visitor‗guide/theater‗district.702514/editorial‗review.aspx. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

Trapnell, Kelli. "History of NYC Streets: The Great White Way." Untapped Cities, 6 Dec. 2012, untappedcities.com/2012/12/06/history-of-streets-the-great-white-way/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

"The Unknown Story of Broadway Street." Metro Focus, 20 Oct. 2015, www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2015/10/the-unknown-story-of-broadway-street/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2017.

Young, Michelle. Broadway. Arcadia Publishing, 2015.