Know Your Roots, Broadway Fans

Broadway theatre buffs know the show tunes backwards to forwards, have the lines memorized and can tell you anything you need to know about which actor is dating which actress.  But would anyone going to see Wicked or Phantom of the Opera know why, pray tell, they named the street Broadway?  You can probably guess. It’s a wide street, so they named it broad way.  But why was the street placed where it is?  Why does it seem to meander through lower Manhattan and into the Bronx without any real connection to the other squared-off city streets?

Let us direct you to this fascinating New York Times article. This piece only barely scrapes the surface of the street known as Broadway.  The author is trying to advocate the idea that the city of New York shold have a sort of NYC version of Boston’s Freedom Trail, but it touches on the actual reason for Broadway’s existence. You see, back in the time when the Native Americans lived on the Island Manhattan (so named for those Americans), back before the Dutch and the other Europeans came to inhabit the island, the street was a simple path, cut through the brush and the forest, that the natives used as a main trail from one encampment to the other. That’s why it’s not exactly in a straight line.

To get Broadway tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Posted in General on April 7, 2009

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