Broadway

Broadway famous thoroughfare in New York City. It extends from Bowling Green near the foot of Manhattan island N to 262d St. in the Bronx. Throughout its length Broadway is chiefly a commercial street. In lower Manhattan it runs through the financial center of the country; N of Union Square (14th St.) it passes a merchandising section; further N around Herald Square there are large department stores; finally around Times Square (42d St.), which has undergone significant redevelopment, it enters the theater district, or the "Great White Way," the most storied portion of Broadway. Points of interest along Broadway include Trinity Church (Wall St.); St. Paul's Chapel, built 1766 (near City Hall); the Woolworth Building (at Barclay St.); the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (64th-66th streets); Columbia Univ. (113th-121st streets); the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (168th St.); and Van Cortlandt Park (at the north end of the city). Broadway was laid out by the Dutch and was the principal street of New Amsterdam ; its northern stretches in Manhattan were formerly called Bloomingdale Road.

Bibliography: See D. W. Dunlap, On Broadway (1990).

Broadway, street running north—south of Manhattan Island, New York. It is used to denote the New York commercial theatre because many famous theatres stood on it, though the theatres are now mostly in side streets. The high cost and consequent unadventurousness of Broadway productions led to the establishment of smaller Off-Broadway theatres away from the area.