What is broadway famous for

New York’s Theatre History: Broadway

The word «Broadway» is special because it denotes both a profession and a place: the theater industry and a major boulevard running the length of Manhattan. While this may seem obvious to a New Yorker, many non-natives don’t associate the two until they’ve stood on the sidewalks of Broadway. To make things even more confusing, many Broadway shows aren’t actually on Broadway itself, and some of the shows that are staged on this famous street are labeled «off-Broadway.» But even before the first American musical was staged, Broadway was an important street, a status it retains to this day.

The Origins of Broadway

Before «Broadway» became synonymous with the theater industry, it was simply a means of transportation. When Native Americans lived on the island called Mannahatta, their name for Broadway was the Wickquasgeck Trail. The trail naturally stretched the length of Mannahatta, and when Dutch colonists arrived to create New Amsterdam, they began using this thoroughfare, too, calling it de Heere Straat, or «Gentleman’s Street.» The road stretched from Fort Amsterdam through the settlement to a fortification against the English along what is now Wall Street. When the English took over New Amsterdam, renaming it New York, they renamed Broadway as well.

The Origins of Broadway Theater

While the English theater industry was well established by the time colonists began venturing to the New World, building settlements was rigorous work with little time for entertainment of this scale. No record of an organized theater production in America is available until 1732. On Dec. 6, 1732, a troupe of actors described as Londoners performed George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer in what was known as the New Theater, a building owned by the governor, Rip Van Dam. Later, the Nassau Street Theater, also owned by Van Dam, would host productions like Richard III as well as John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, the first musical production to be performed in New York, in 1750. Many of the early New York theaters were little more than wooden houses painted red, and though they would serve their purpose as a venue for stage productions, it would not be until the construction of the Park Theater in 1798 that theater venues in New York would resemble those in England.

The Great White Way

Today, Broadway itself stretches all the way from Inwood to Bowling Green, but only a portion of this boulevard is a part of the theater district. The section of Broadway that is famous for entertainment is called the Great White Way, and it lies between 42nd and 53rd streets. In the 1890s, this section of Broadway was one of the first roadways to be lit with electric lights. This led to a headline in the Feb. 3, 1902, edition of the New York Telegram, «Found on the Great White Way,» which led to the nickname. The Broadway of the early 1900s embodied its nickname: It was a source of novelty and adventure brightly lit by hundreds of arc lamps. Vaudeville, silent pictures, and Broadway variety shows such as the Ziegfeld Follies coexisted as the most popular forms of entertainment.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression was a hard time in Broadway’s history. With the economy in shambles and unemployment high, the audiences of 1920s Broadway diminished considerably. This caused an estimated 75% of Broadway performers and producers to move to Hollywood. Many Broadway theaters were also renovated into movie theaters as success of talking pictures grew. On Broadway, productions sought to find humor in the Depression. Notable shows to debut during the 1930s include Anything Goes (1934), Porgy and Bess (written by Du Bose Heyward and George and Ira Gershwin, who returned to Hollywood after the musical’s mediocre reviews), Irving Berlin and Moss Heart’s As Thousands Cheer (1933), and Once in a Lifetime. Three political satires opened in 1937: Rodger and Heart’s I’d Rather Be Right, about the FDR administration, Pins and Needles, and The Cradle Will Rock, which was directed by Orson Welles.

The Middle Years

Following the Great Depression, interest in Broadway rose. Many view the debut of Rodger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! in 1943 as the start of the «golden age» of Broadway, which lasted well into the 1960s. Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals were at the forefront of Broadway’s success during this time, featuring dance routines, catchy tunes, and boy-meets-girl plots. Other Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals to debut at this time include Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), and The King and I (1951). The Lerner and Lowe productions followed a similar path, with Brigadoon (1947), My Fair Lady (1956), and Camelot (1960) being a few examples.

The 1970s was a second time of decline on Broadway: New York City was struggling with vandalism and crime, and the optimism of the postwar era was fading. Programs to reinvest in Broadway made the 1980s a more successful time, and business increased when hit shows like Les Misérables (1987) and The Phantom of the Opera (1988) debuted.

Modern-Day Theater

Longest-Running Plays

The longest-running Broadway show is The Phantom of the Opera, which has run for more than 12,000 performances since its opening night on Jan. 26, 1988. But the title of longest-running musical in New York City is still a ways off: The off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks opened in 1960 and closed in 2002, running for 17,162 performances. The show then reopened in 2006; combining its two runs, it has been a part of Broadway for more than 50 years. Some other long-running shows include the revival of Chicago, which debuted in 1996, The Lion King, which has been performed since 1997, and Les Misérables, which opened in 1987, closed in 2003, and has since been revived twice.

The History of Broadway

Broadway, or Broadway theatre, is theatre performances in New York in the 41 professional theatres that have 500 or more seats located along Broadway. Broadway theatres are located in the Theater District and lincoln Center in New York and are popular tourist attractions. Most shows today on Broadway are musicals with some plays. Theatre first became popular and present in New York in 1750 and is still going on to this day.

Walter Murray and Thomas Keane, actor-managers, established the first significant theatre in New York in 1750. They established a resident theatre company at a theatre on Nassau Street that held approximately 280 people. Shakespeare plays and ballad operas like The Beggar’s Opera were presented at the theatre. William Hallam sent a company of twelve British actors to the colonies along with his brother Lewis, who was also his manager, two years later in 1752. In Williamsburg, Virginia, they established a theatre, opening with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The following summer in 1753, the company moved from Williamsburg to New York, where they performed ballad operas and ballad-farces.

The Park Theatre. Source: wikipedia.org

Upon the start of the American Revolutionary war in 1775, theatre in New York was suspended, but resumed in 1798. That same year, Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street (now Park Row). Park Theatre had 2,000 seats, much more than the previous theatres. And later on in 1826, the Bowery Theatre was opened with many more to follow. In the 1830s, the American entertainment form blackface minstrel shows became popular, and even more so in the 1840s with the arrival of the Virginia Minstrels.

When Niblo’s Garden, a Broadway theatre on Broadway and Prince Street, opened in 1829, it quickly became a premiere nightspot in New York. It had 3,000 seats and presented all sorts of entertainment, including musicals. An entertainment complex was being operated by P.T. Barnum in lower Manhattan by the 1840s as well. Palmo’s Opera House opened in 1844. However, it was only open and presented operas for four seasons then had to rebrand as a play venue due to bankruptcy. Palmo’s Opera House then became known as Burton’s Theatre. In 1847, the Astor Opera house opened. When lower class Broadway patrons objected to what they had perceived as being snobbery by the upper class in the audiences at Astor place, a riot broke out in 1849.

William Shakespeare’s plays were presented frequently during this period on Broadway. Edwin Booth was a notable American actor who had gained a worldwide reputation for his performances in Hamlet as the title role. He famously played the role for 100 consecutive performances in 1865 at the Winter Garden Theatre. Edwin Booth also happened to be the brother of President Abraham Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth. Later on, Edwin Booth reprised the role at his own theatre called Booth’s Theatre. Fanny Davenport, Charles Fechter, Henry Irving, and Tommaso Salvini had also become notable Shakespearean performers in New York.

In 1868 Lydia Thompson came to America at the head of a small theatrical troupe. They adapted popular burlesques from England for middle-class audiences in New York. Her troupe became known as the “British Blondes” and during the 1868-69 season, was the most popular show.

Around 1850, seeking more inexpensive real estate in New York, moved from downtown to midtown. By 1870, Union Square was the heart of Broadway. And then by the end of the nineteenth century most theatres were located near Madison Square. Not until the early twentieth century did theatres find their way to Times Square.

The Black Crook is considered to be the first piece of theatre that set the stage for the modern musical when it debuted on September 12, 1866 in New York. The show ran for fave and a half hours and had a record breaking 474 performances. In 1866, the first show to be called a musical comedy was The Black Domino/Between You, Me, and the Post.

In 1881, the first vaudeville theatre was opened just east of Union Square by Tony Pastor. There, Lillian Russell, prominent American actress and singer, performed. Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart, two comedians, produced and starred in their own musicals from 1878-90. Their show The Mulligan Guard Picnic featured a book and lyrics by Harrigan and his father-in-law, David Braham, did the music. Their musical comedies were about characters and their everyday lives as lower class New Yorkers. They represented significant steps from the popular vaudeville and burlesque to a more literate form of theatre. Instead of women of more questionable repute from earlier forms of musicals, Harrigan and Hart’s musicals starred high quality signers like Lillian Russell, Vivienne Segal, and Fay Templeton.

The number of potential theatre patrons grew immensely as transportation in New York improved, poverty diminished, and street lighting made for safer night travel. Plays were then able to run longer and draw in large audiences. This led to better profits and improved values in production. Much like what was happening in England, theatre was becoming more clean with less prostitution. Gilbert and Sullivan created family-friendly comic operas that were hits in London and were soon brought to America. In 1878, they began with H.M.S. Pinafore. American productions like Robin Hood in 1891 and El Capitan in 1896 were imitations of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works.

Charley Hoyt took over the record of the longest running show when A Trip to Chinatown came out in 1891. The show ran for a total of 657 performances! Not until 1919 was this record surpassed either with Irene. Five years later in 1896, the Theatrical Syndicate was formed by two theatre owners, Marc Klaw and A. L. Erlanger. The Theatrical Syndicate was in control of nearly every legitimate theatre located in the United States for sixteen years to come. Small vaudeville and variety houses continued to be profitable and Off-Broadway had been established by the end of the 19th century too.

The first musical comedy that was entirely produced and performed by African Americans on Broadway was A Trip to Coontown in 1998. Clorindy: The Origin of the Cakewalk in 1898 and In Dahomey in 1902 followed. The latter was extremely successful. In the early 1890s and 1900s many musical comedies began showing up on Broadway from composers such as John Walter Bratton, George M. Cohan, Gus Edwards, and more. New York Broadway runs continued to be short for the most part, unlike in London. British musicals were also extremely successful in New York.

In the early 1900s, translations of popular operettas and the “Princess Theatre” shows were popular. Broadway shows also began to install electric signs outside the theatres, starting with The Red Mill (1906). colored bulbs burned out too fast, so they used white lights instead. Thus, Broadway was given the nickname “The Great White Way”.

The Actors’ Equity Association demanded a standard contract for all professional products in August of 1919 and went on strike. Due to the estrick, all theatres were shut down and producers were forced to agree with them. And by the 1920s, the Shubert Brothers took over most of the theatres from the Erlanger syndicate.

Winchell Smith and Frank Bacon’s Lightin’ was the first show on Broadway to ever reach 700 performances. And it later also became the first show to reach 1,000 performance. It was the longest running Broadway show before Abie’s Irish Rose in 1925 took over.

When the motion picture first debuted, it became a competition to stage performances. Originally they were only limited competition due to being silent, but by the 1920s as films had synchronized sound, they competed more and more with theatre. Some critics even wondered if cinema would altogether replace live theatre. Live vaudeville did out and could not compete with inexpensive films featuring vaudeville stars and other major comedians.

Musicals of the 1920s borrowed from vaudeville, musical hall, and other entertainment types and ignored plot to instead emphasize actors and actresses, dance routines, and popular songs. Annually, Florenz Ziegfeld produced song-and-dance reviews on Broadway that featured extravagant and elaborate sets and costumes. Many of the productions from the 1920s were lighthearted and included Funny Face, Harlem, Lady Be Good, Sally, and many more.

Show Boat premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927, leaving behind the frivolous shows from earlier that decade. The musical had a book and score and was made up of dramatic themes told through music and dialogue, along with setting and movement. It ran for a total of 572 performances.

Many Broadway dramas began to address the rise in Europe of Nazism as World War II was approaching. They also addressed America’s non-intervention. Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine opened in April of 1941 and was the most successful of these plays.

Broadway theatre had gone into a golden age when Oklahoma! premiered in 1943. The blockbuster musical ran for a total of 2,212 performances and was the first musical Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote together. The two of them went on to write many more successful musicals together.

A committee of the American Theatre Wing founded the Tony Awards in 1947. They named the awards after actress, director, co-founder of the American Theatre Wing, and producer Antoinette Perry who had passed away the year before. On April 6, 1947, the first awards ceremony was held at the New York City Waldorf Astoria hotel. The awards are still going on to this for Broadway productions and are considered to be the highest honor in the U.S. for theatre.

Producer and director Joe Papp, who had also established The Public Theater in New york, led the “Save the Theatres” campaign in the spring of 1982. The not-for-profit organization was created to save theater buildings from being demolished. It was also supported by the Actors Equity Union.

The 97th Congress introduced a bill called “H.R.6885, A bill to designate the Broadway/Times Square Theatre District in the City of New York as a national historic site” in July of 1982. Mayor Ed Koch’s Administration lobbied hard against the bill along with corporate Manhattan development interests. In the end, the bill was not passed.

Today, the longest running show on Broadway is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, which began previews in early 1988 and opened at the end of January that year. On February 11, 2012, it became the first broadway musical to ever surpass 10,000 performances. And by November of 2016, the musical had been performed over 12,000 times in 28 years.

Why Broadway attracts tourists: interesting facts about the longest street in New York

Photo: Shutterstock

Broadway is almost 30 kilometers long and ends outside of New York. “It is curious that the street does not fit into the slender perpendicular layout of Manhattan. If you look at the map, it becomes clear that the street, like a snake, winds between geometrically flat quarters, ”the author notes.

The first mention of Broadway Street on maps dates back to the very beginning of the XNUMXth century. “It is noteworthy that at the time of the Dutch, the street was called Brad-veg. Then this name migrated to English and became Broadway, ”the author explained.

Today, the famous Broadway is home to many office buildings, various representative offices and agencies.

The world famous Theatrical quarter, where the largest Broadway theaters, cinemas, restaurants, hotels and other entertainment establishments are concentrated. That is why the street name has become synonymous with American theater. Metropolitan Opera is also on Broadway.

Today the world’s most prestigious openings are held here on Broadway.

However, do not confuse Broadway in Manhattan with other streets in New York with the same name. “There are four streets in New York called Broadway — Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. But, of course, only Manhattan is world famous, ”the author noted.

“Once, before June 3, 1962, it was a two-way street,” the author writes. However, since May 2009, movement on Broadway has become more convenient for pedestrians, when Broadway through Duffy Square and Herald Square was closed to traffic. “Between 35th and 42nd Streets, Broadway has undergone a major makeover. Currently, the cycle path is on the left side of the sidewalks, which can sometimes cause problems between pedestrians and cyclists, ”the author added.

By the way, one of the oldest Broadway theaters that still hosts guests is «Lyceum Theater». It was built in 1903 and is located at 149 West 45 Street, between Seventh and Sixth avenues in midtown Manhattan. The theater is housed in a three-story building and can seat almost a thousand people. It is one of the few theaters in New York that continues to operate under its original name today.

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Broadway (New York City)

BroadwaySouth end:Stone Street / Whitehall Street, Lower Manhattan, in New York CityMajor
junctions: NY 495 in Manhattan
I-95 / US 1 / US 9 in Manhattan
NY 9A / Henry Hudson Parkway in The Bronx
NY 9A in Yonkers
I-87 / I-287 / Thruway / NY 119 in Tarrytown
NY 448 in Sleepy HollowNorth end: US 9 / NY 117 in Sleepy Hollow, Westchester County, New York

Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. [ 1 ] It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to the first New Amsterdam settlement. The name Broadway is the English literal translation of the Dutch name, Breede weg. A stretch of Broadway is famous as the heart of the American theatre industry.

Contents

History

Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush destination of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants. [ 2 ] 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 Nieuw 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«. [ 3 ] In the mid-eighteenth century, part of Broadway in what is now lower Manhattan was known as Great George Street. [ 4 ] 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 on February 14, 1899 the name «Broadway» was extended to the whole old road. [ 5 ]

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 is a one-way southbound street. Starting in 2009, vehicular traffic is banned at Times Square between 47th and 42nd Streets, and at Herald Square between 35th and 33rd Streets as part of a pilot program; the right-of-way is intact and reserved for cyclists and pedestrians. From the northern shore of Manhattan, Broadway 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. U.S. 9 continues to be known as Broadway through its junction with NY 117.

Because Broadway is a true north–south route that parallels the Hudson River and precedes the grid that the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 imposed on the island, Broadway diagonally crosses Manhattan, its intersections with avenues marked by «squares» (some merely triangular slivers of open space) that have induced some interesting architecture, such as the 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 boundary between Greenwich Village to the west and the East Village to the east, 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. Union Square is the only location wherein Broadway is discontinuous in Manhattan.

At Madison Square, location of the Flatiron Building, 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 is one of the largest department stores in the world.

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 nickname 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. Until June 2007, The New York Times, from which the Square gets its name, was published at offices at 239 West 43rd Street; the paper stopped printing papers there on June 15, 1997. [ 6 ]

At the southwest corner of Central Park, Broadway crosses Eighth Avenue at West 59th Street; on the site of the former New York Coliseum convention center is the new shopping center at the foot of the 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), known as the Manhattan New York Temple.

At the intersection with 72nd street, the triangle of tiny Verdi Square is surrounded by several notable apartment buildings, including The Ansonia, and the Florentine palazzo occupied by Apple Bank for Savings.

At its intersection with 78th Street, Broadway shifts direction, to continue directly uptown aligned approximately with the Commissioners’ grid. Past the bend are The Apthorp and the First Baptist Church in the City of New York (1891), built for a Baptist congregation in New York since 1762. The road heads north passing such important apartment houses as The Belnord, the Astor Court Building, and the Art nouveau Cornwall. [ 7 ] [ 8 ]

At 99th Street Broadway passes between the controversial skyscrapers of The Ariel East and West.

At 107th Street Broadway intersects with West End Avenue to form Straus Park with its Titanic Memorial by Augustus Lukeman.

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, in part on the tract that housed the Bloomingdale (Lunatic) Asylum from 1808 until it moved to Westchester County in 1894. Still in Morningside Heights, Broadway passes the handsome, park-like campus of Barnard College. Next, the beautiful Gothic quadrangle of Union Theological Seminary and the brick buildings of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America with their beautifully landscaped interior courtyards face one another across Broadway. On the next block is the Manhattan School of Music. Broadway then runs past the proposed uptown campus of Columbia University, and the main campus of CUNY—City College; the beautiful Gothic buildings of the original City College campus are out of sight, a block to the east. Also to the east are the handsome brownstones of Hamilton Heights.

Broadway achieves a verdant, park-like effect, particularly in the spring, when it runs between the uptown Trinity Church Cemetery and the former Trinity Chapel, now the Church of the Intercession, New York near 155th Street. The springtime plantings in the median, maintained by Trinity Church, are spectacular. [ citation needed ]

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital lies on Broadway near 166th, 167th, and 168th Streets in Washington Heights. At this point, Broadway becomes part of US 9. The intersection with Saint Nicholas Avenue at 167th Street forms Mitchell Square Park.

Broadway crosses the Harlem River on the Broadway Bridge to Marble Hill and then enters The Bronx, where it is the eastern border of Riverdale and the western border of Van Cortlandt Park. After leaving New York City, it is the main north–south street of western Yonkers, New York, before becoming Albany Post Road at the northern border of Tarrytown, 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 2011, Broadway is now served by the M4 (ex-FACCo 4), M5 (ex-FACCo 5), M7 (ex-NYCO 7), M100, and M104. Other routes that use part of Broadway include the M10, M20, M60, Bx7, and Bx20.

Canyon of Heroes

Canyon of Heroes is occasionally used to refer to the section of lower Broadway in the Financial District that is the location of the city’s ticker-tape parades.

The traditional route of the parade is northward from Bowling Green to City Hall Park. Most of the route is lined with tall office buildings along both sides, affording a view of the parade for thousands of office workers who create the snowstorm-like jettison of shredded paper products that characterize the parade.

While typical sports championship parades have been showered with some 50 tons of confetti and shredded paper, the V-J Day parade on August 14 and August 15, 1945 – marking the end of World War II – was covered with 5,438 tons of paper, based on estimates provided by the New York City Department of Sanitation. [ 9 ]

More than 200 black granite strips embedded in the sidewalks along the Canyon of Heroes list honorees of past ticker-tape parades. [ 10 ]

The most recent parade in the Canyon of Heroes was on November 6, 2009 for the New York Yankees in honor of their 27th World Series Championship. [ 11 ]

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, and encompassing Times Square. [ citation needed ]

In 1880, a stretch of Broadway between Union Square and Madison Square was illuminated by Brush arc lamps, making it among the first electrically lighted streets in the United States. [ 12 ] By the 1890s, the portion from 23rd Street to 34th Street was so brightly illuminated by electrical advertising signs, that people began calling it «The Great White Way.» [ 13 ] When the theatre district moved uptown, the name was transferred to the Times Square area.

The phrase Great White Way has been attributed to Shep Friedman, columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph in 1901, who lifted the term from the title of a book about the Arctic by Albert Paine. [ 14 ] The headline «Found on the Great White Way» appeared in the February 3, 1902, edition of the New York Evening Telegram. [ 14 ]

A portrait of Broadway in the early part of the 20th century and «The Great White Way» late at night appeared in «Artist In Manhattan»(1940) [ 15 ] written by the painter-writer Jerome Myers:

Early morn on Broadway, the same light that tips the mountain tops of the Colorado canyons gradually discloses the quiet anatomy, the bare skeletons of the huge iron signs that trellis the sky, now denuded of the attractions of the volcanic night. Almost lifeless, the tired entertainers of the night clubs and their friends straggle to their rooms, taximen compare notes and earnings, the vast street scene has had its curtain call, the play is over.

Dear old Broadway, for many years have I dwelt on your borders. I have known the quiet note of your dawn. Even earlier I would take my coffee at Martin’s, at 54th Street–now, alas, vanished–where I would see creatures of the night life before they disappeared with the dawn.

One night a celebrated female impersonator came to the restaurant in all his regalia, directly from a club across the street. Several taximen began to poke fun at him. Unable any longer to bear their taunts, he got up and knocked all the taximen out cold. Then he went back to the club, only to lament under his bitter tears, «See how they’ve ruined my dress!»

Gone are the old-time Broadway oyster bars and chop houses that were the survivors of a tradition of their sporting patrons, the bon vivants of Manhattan. Gone are the days when the Hoffman House flourished on Madison Square, with its famous nudes by Bouguereau; when barrooms were palaces, on nearly every corner throughout the city; when Steve Brodie, jumping from Brooklyn Bridge, splashed the entire country with publicity; when Bowery concert halls dispensed schooners of beer for a nickel, with a stage show thrown in; when Theis’s Music Hall still resounded on 14th Street with its great mechanical organ, the wonder of its day, a place of beauty, with fine paintings and free company and the frankest of female life. Across the street was Tammany Hall, and next to it Tony Pastor’s, where stars of the stage were born. Tony himself, in dress clothes and top hat, sang his ballads, a gallant trouper introducing Lillian Russell and others to fame through his audience.

Modern traffic flow

In August 2008, two traffic lanes from 42nd to 35th Streets were taken out of service and converted to public plazas. [ 22 ]

Since May 2009, the portions of Broadway through Duffy Square, Times Square, and Herald Square have been closed entirely to automobile traffic, except for cross traffic on the Streets and Avenues, as part of a traffic and pedestrianization experiment, with the pavement reserved exclusively for walkers, cyclists, and those lounging in temporary seating placed by the City. The City decided that the experiment was successful and decided to make the change permanent in February 2010. Though the anticipated benefits to traffic flow were not as large as hoped, pedestrian injuries dropped dramatically and foot traffic increased in the designated areas; the project was popular with both residents and businesses. [ 23 ]

Broadway

If Hollywood is synonymous with the cinema, Broadway has come to signify the American theater. From its humble beginnings in downtown New York City in the early nineteenth century, to its heyday as the Great White Way in the mid-twentieth century, to its status as one of America’s chief tourist attractions at the end of the twentieth century, Broadway has lured both aspiring actors and starstruck theatergoers for well over a century, becoming, in the process, one of America’s chief contributions to global culture. As the home of the American musical theater and the breeding ground for both popular and cutting-edge drama, Broadway has helped to nurture America’s performing arts, even as it has enticed the greatest stars of England and Europe to its stages. In a nation that struggled long and hard to define itself and its artistic community as separate from yet equal to Europe, Broadway stands as one of America’s greatest success stories.

As early as 1826, New York City had begun making a name for itself as the hub of the nascent American theater. That year, the Park Theatre featured the debut of the first two American-born actors who would go on to achieve fame and fortune in the theater—Edwin Forrest and James H. Hackett. Later that same year, the 3,000-seat Bowery Theatre opened; it was the first playhouse to have both a press agent and glass-shaded gas-jet lighting. The grand new venue would soon become legendary for the frequently rowdy working-class theatergoers it would attract. Over the next 20 years, Americans flocked to the New York theater district in increasing numbers, and in 1849, when the celebrated British actor William Macready brought his Macbeth to the Astor Place Opera House, Edwin Forrest supporters turned out en masse to protest the British star. On May 10th, a riot of over 1,000 resulted in the death of 22 people.

During the mid-nineteenth century, the biggest stars of the American theater were Fanny Kemble and Edwin Booth. Booth’s 100 performances of Hamlet at the Winter Garden would stand as a record for the Shakespearean tragedy until John Barrymore’s 1923 production. In addition to European classics, among the most popular of American plays was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which, in its first production, ran for 325 performances. But while both dramas and melodramas drew steady audiences, a new kind of revue called vaudeville, featuring burlesques and other musical entertainment, was beginning to come into fashion at the Olympic Theatre.

By 1880, Broadway had become the generic term for American theater. Shows would premiere in the New York theater district, which was then centered downtown at Union Square and 14th Street. From New York, road companies would then travel to other cities and towns with Broadway’s hit shows. That year, the world’s most famous actress, France’s Sarah Bernhardt, would make her American debut at the Booth Theatre. Over the remaining 20 years of the nineteenth century, many of the great English and European actors and actresses such as Lillie Langtree, Henry Irving, and Eleanora Duse, would come to Broadway before making triumphal national tours. Among the most popular American stars of this period were Edwin Booth and his acting partner, Lawrence Barrett; James O’Neill, father of playwright Eugene O’Neill; and Richard Mansfield.

One of Broadway’s most successful playwright-cum-impresarios of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was David Belasco, who made his Broadway debut in 1880 with Hearts of Oak, a play that touted stage realism to the degree that the audience could smell the food being served in a dinner scene. European realists such as Henrik Ibsen were also well received in America. But Broadway devoted equal, if not more time, to the growing desire for «family entertainment,» and vaudeville became all the rage.

In 1893, the American Theatre opened on 42nd Street, an area that had previously been residential. In ensuing years, the theater district would gradually inch its way uptown to Times Square. By the end of the century, most theaters were located between 20th and 40th Streets, and vaudeville had firmly established itself as the most popular form of family entertainment in America. In just 75 years, the American theater had set down such deep roots that acting schools had begun to open around the country; organizations for the welfare of aging theatrical professionals were formed; and the first periodical devoted exclusively to the stage, Theatre Magazine, was founded.

Throughout the beginning of the century, feuds between competing producers, impresarios, theater circuits, and booking companies dominated Broadway, with such famous names as William Morris, Martin Beck, William Hammerstein, and the Orpheum Circuit all getting into the fray. But amidst all the chaos, the American theater continued to grow in both quality and popularity, as new stars seemed to be born almost every day. One of the most distinguished names on turn-of-the-century Broadway was that of the Barrymore family. The three children of actor Maurice Barrymore—sons Lionel and John and daughter Ethel—took their first Broadway bows during this period, rising to dazzling heights during their heyday.

Florenz Ziegfeld, another of the leading lights of Broadway, had made his debut as a producer in 1896. His Follies of 1907 was the first of the annual music, dance, and comic extravaganzas that would come to bear his name after 1911. Other producers soon followed suit with similar revues featuring comic sketches and songs. Among the most popular of these were the Shuberts’ Passing Shows, George White’s Scandals, and Irving Berlin’s Music Box Revues. Many composers who would go on to great heights found their starts with these revues, including Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin. But even more significantly, these revues catapulted singers and comedians to a new kind of national stardom. Among the household names featured in these reviews were Fanny Brice, Lillian Lorraine, Marilyn Miller, Bert Williams, Ed Wynn, Will Rogers, and Al Jolson.

By the 1910s, music had become an increasingly significant force on Broadway, and a slew of new young composers had begun to make their marks—including Cole Porter and George M. Cohan. By 1917, the United States had entered World War I, and Broadway embraced the war effort, with tunes such as Cohan’s «Over There» and «You’re a Grand Old Flag» becoming part of the national consciousness. But as Broadway began to hold increasing sway over popular taste, experimental theater groups such as the Provincetown Players began to crop up downtown near Greenwich Village, where brash young playwrights such as Eugene O’Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay penned work that veered radically from Broadway melodrama and mainstream musical entertainment. These off-Broadway playhouses emphasized realism in their plays, and soon their experimentation began to filter onto Broadway.

In 1918, the first Pulitzer Prize for drama was awarded «for the original American play, performed in New York, which shall best represent the educational value and power of the stage in raising the standards of good morals, good taste, and good manners.» And by 1920, Eugene O’Neill had his first Broadway hit when the Neighborhood Playhouse production of The Emperor Jones moved to the Selwyn Theatre. In 1921, he would win his first Pulitzer Prize for drama for Anna Christie. He would win a second Pulitzer in the 1920s—the 1927 prize for Strange Interlude. The new realism soon came to peacefully coexist with melodrama and the classics, as the acting careers of such leading ladies as Laurette Taylor, Katherine Cornell, and Eva Le Gallienne, and husband-and-wife acting sensations Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt flourished.

Eugene O’Neill’s 1921 «Negro drama,» The Emperor Jones, also heralded a remarkable era of the American theater. Inspired by the burgeoning theatrical movement of Ireland, a powerful African-American theater movement had begun to develop during the late 1910s and the 1920s. Plays about the «Negro condition» soon found their way to Broadway and a number of significant African-American stars were born during this era. Chief among these were the incomparable Paul Robeson and Ethel Waters. But with the onslaught of the Great Depression, American concerns turned financial, and African-American actors soon found that mainstream (white) Americans were more focused on their own problems, and many of these actors soon found they were out of work.

But despite the proliferation of superb drama on Broadway, musical theater remained the most popular form of entertainment during the 1910s, and by the 1920s a powerful American musical theater movement was growing in strength and influence under the guidance of Cohan, Kern, Gershwin, Porter, and the team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Songs from such 1920s musical comedies as Gershwin’s Girl Crazy, Porter’s Anything Goes, Rogers and Hart’s A Connecticut Yankee soon became popular hits, and performers such as Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, and Gertrude Lawrence achieved stardom in this increasingly popular new genre.

In 1927, a new show opened on Broadway—one that would revolutionize the American musical theater. Showboat, written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II,, was the first musical in which character development and dramatic plot assumed equal—if not greater—importance than the music and the performers. In this groundbreaking musical, serious dramatic issues were addressed, accompanied by such memorable songs as «Ol’ Man River» and «Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.» Music, lyrics, and plot thus became equal partners in creating a uniquely American contribution to the musical theater. Over the next 40 years, Broadway witnessed a golden age in which the modern musical comedy became one of America’s unique contributions to the world theater. Richard Rodgers teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II on such classic productions as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Another successful duo, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe contributed Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot. Other classic musicals of this era included Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls; Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg’s Finian’s Rainbow; Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate; Jule Styne’s Gypsy; and Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story. This wealth of material naturally produced a proliferation of musical stars, including Mary Martin, Carol Channing, Chita Rivera, Gwen Verdon, Alfred Drake, Zero Mostel, Rex Harrison, Richard Kiley, Robert Preston, John Raitt, and Julie Andrews.

Although the American musical theater was flourishing, drama also continued to thrive on Broadway. Following the Crash of 1929, however, Broadway momentarily floundered, as Americans no longer had the extra money to spend on entertainment. And when they did, they tended to spend the nickel it cost to go to the movies. And, in fact, many of Broadway’s biggest stars were being lured to Hollywood by large movie contracts and the prospect of film careers. But by 1936, the lights were once again burning brightly on the Great White Way—with playwrights such as Lillian Hellman, Maxwell Anderson, John Steinbeck, Noel Coward, Thornton Wilder, Clifford Odets, and William Saroyan churning out critically-acclaimed hits, and American and European actors such as Helen Hayes, Sir John Gielguld, Jose Ferrer, Ruth Gordon, Tallulah Bankhead, and Burgess Meredith drawing-in enthusiastic audiences. A new generation of brash young performers such as Orson Welles, whose Mercury Theater took Broadway by storm during the 1937-38 season, also began to make their mark, as Broadway raised its sights—attempting to rival the well-established theatrical traditions of England and the Continent.

By the start of World War II, Broadway was booming, and stars, producers, and theatergoers alike threw themselves into the war effort. The American Theatre Wing helped to organize the Stage Door Canteen, where servicemen not only were entertained, but also could dance with Broadway stars and starlets. Throughout the war, Broadway stars entertained troops overseas, even as hit shows such as Oklahoma!, This is the Army, The Skin of Our Teeth, Life with Father, and Harvey entertained theatergoers. But change was afoot on the Great White Way. After the war, New York City was flooded with GIs attending school on the U.S. government’s dime. Young men and women flocked to the city as the new mecca of the modern world. And amidst the thriving art and theater scenes, a new breed of actor began to emerge during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, trained in the Stanislavski-inspired method by such eminent teachers as Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. Among these young Turks were future film and theater stars Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, and Kim Stanley. Soon a whole new kind of theater took form under the guiding hand of hard-hitting directors such as Elia Kazan and through the pen of such playwrights as Tennessee Williams, whose passionate realism in hit plays such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, and A Streetcar Named Desire changed the face of the American theater.

In 1947, the American Theatre Wing created the first Tony awards—named after Antoinette Perry—to honor the best work on Broadway. But by the 1950s, the burgeoning television industry had come to rival Broadway and Hollywood in influence and popularity—and soon had superseded both. Statistics revealed that less than two percent of the American public attended legitimate theater performances. But Broadway continued to churn out hit musicals at the same time that it remained a breeding ground for cutting-edge new American drama—such as that being written by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible). And, for the first time in almost thirty years, African Americans were finding work on the Great White Way; in 1958 playwright Lorraine Hansberry won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Raisin in the Sun, while director Lloyd Richards made his Broadway debut.

On August 23, 1960, Broadway blacked out all its lights for one minute—it was the first time since World War II that all the lights had been dimmed. Oscar Hammerstein II had died; an era had ended. During the 1960s, Broadway continued both to expand its horizons as well as to consolidate its successes by churning out popular hits. After a rocky start, Camelot, starring Richard Burton and Julie Andrews, became a huge hit in 1960—the same year that a controversial production of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros opened on Broadway. Throughout the decade, mainstream entertainment—plays by the most successful of mainstream playwrights, Neil Simon, and musicals such as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Funny Girl, and Man of La Mancha occupied equal time with radical new work by playwrights such as Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and LeRoi Jones. By late in the decade, the new mores of the 1960s had found their way to Broadway. Nudity, profanity, and homosexuality were increasingly commonplace on stage, following the success of such hit shows as Hair and The Boys in the Band. A slew of musicals aimed at the younger generation, incorporating new sounds of soft rock, followed with Stephen Schwartz’s Godspell ; Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ, Superstar ; and the Who’s Tommy.

Meanwhile, avant-garde English and European dramatists such as Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Samuel Beckett brought their radical new work to Broadway, even as a new kind of musical—the concept musical, created by Stephen Sondheim in such hits as Company and Follies —took the American musical theater in a whole new direction. In this new form of a now time-honored American tradition, narrative plot was superseded by songs, which furthered serial plot developments. Other successful musicals of the type were Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret and Chicago, and Michael Bennett’s immensely popular A Chorus Line. During the 1970s, two producer-directors who had begun working in the mid-1950s rose to increasing prominence—Hal Prince, who was the guiding hand behind most of Sondheim’s hit musicals; and Joseph Papp, whose Public Theatre became the purveyor of New York’s high brow and experimental theater.

With the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980 came an era of conservatism in which Broadway became the virtual domain of two men—composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Macintosh. Les Miserables, Cats, Evita, Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard, and Miss Saigon were among the most successful of the mega-musicals that took over Broadway for more than decade-long runs. At the same time, however, Broadway was hit by the AIDS epidemic, which from 1982 on began to decimate its ranks. Called to activism by the apathy of the Reagan administration, the Broadway community began to rally behind the gay community. In plays from this period such as Torch Song Trilogy, Bent, M. Butterfly, and La Cage aux Folles, homosexuality came out of Broadway’s closet for good. And during the decade, increasing numbers of African-American actors, playwrights, and plays found a permanent home on the Great White Way—from the South African-themed plays of Athol Fugard, to the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of August Wilson, to musicals about the lives of such musicians as Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton. Broadway also became increasingly enamored with all things English during the 1980s—from the epic production of Nicholas Nickleby, to the increasing presence of top English stars such as Ian McKellen, to the increasing infatuation with the mega-musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. But homegrown playwrights such as David Mamet, Neil Simon, John Guare, and August Wilson nonetheless continued to reap the lion’s share of the critic’s awards, including Pulitzers, New York Drama Critic’s Circle, and Tonys.

In the late 1980s, a new phenomenon hit Broadway when Madonna starred in Speed the Plow. In her critically acclaimed performance, the pop and film star boosted Broadway box office sales to such a degree that producers soon began clamoring to find Hollywood stars to headline their plays. Throughout the 1990s, as the mega-musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and popular revivals such as Damn Yankees, Guys and Dolls, and Showboat dominated the box office, Broadway producers sought to make profits by bringing in big names to bolster sales. Over the course of the decade, Hollywood stars such as Kathleen Turner, Robert De Niro, Nicole Kidman, and Glenn Close opened plays and musicals on the Great White Way. But the district received a multi-billion dollar facelift when Disney came into the picture, creating a showcase for its hugely successful musical ventures such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. But despite what many critics saw as the increasingly commercialization and suburbanization (playing to the tourists) of Broadway, powerful new voices continued to emerge in the plays of Wendy Wasserstein (The Heidi Chronicles), Tony Kushner (Angels in America), and Jonathan Larson (Rent).

At the millennium, Broadway remains one of America’s singular contributions to both high and popular culture. Despite the puissance of the film and television industries, the lure of the legitimate theater remains a strong one. Broadway is at once a popular tourist attraction and the purveyor of the tour de force that is the theater. With its luminous 175-year history sparkling in America’s memory, Broadway can look forward to a new century filled with change, innovation, extravaganza, and excess—as the continuing mecca of the American theater.

Further Reading:

Atkinson, Brooks. Broadway. New York, Macmillan, 1970.

Baral, Robert. Revue: A Nostalgic Reprise of the Great Broadway Period. New York, Fleet, 1962.

Blum, Daniel. A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1860-1970. New York, Crown, 1969.

Brown, Gene. Show Time: A Chronology of Broadway and the Theatre from Its Beginnings to the Present. New York, Macmillan, 1997.

Churchill, Allen. The Great White Way: A Recreation of Broad-way’s Golden Era of Theatrical Entertainment. New York, E.P. Dutton, 1962.

Dunlap, David W. On Broadway: A Journey Uptown over Time. New York, Rizzoli, 1990.

Ewen, David. The New Complete Book of the American Musical Theater. New York, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.

Frommer, Myrna Katz, and Harvey Frommer. It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way. New York, Harcourt, 1998.

Goldman, William. The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway. 1969.Reprint, New York, Limelight Editions, 1984.