page_title: Broadway (Manhattan)
section_title: Midtown Manhattan
hierarchical_section_title: Broadway (Manhattan) / Route / Route description / Midtown Manhattan
caption_attribution_description: Broadway 1909 Old Post Office, and Park Row Building
context_page_description: Broadway is a road in the U.S. state of New York. Broadway runs from State Street at Bowling Green for 13 mi through the borough of Manhattan and 2 mi through the Bronx, exiting north from the city to run an additional 18 mi through the municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-On-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, and Tarrytown, and terminating north of Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County.
  It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, with much of the current street beginning as the Wickquasgeck trail before the arrival of Europeans. This formed the basis for one of the primary thoroughfares of the Dutch New Amsterdam colony, which continued under British rule, although most of it did not bear its current name until the late 19th century.
  Broadway in Manhattan is known widely as the heart of the American commercial theatrical industry, and is used as a metonym for it, as well as in the names of alternative theatrical ventures such as Off-Broadway and Off-off-Broadway.
context_section_description: Because Broadway preceded the grid that the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 imposed on the island, Broadway crosses midtown Manhattan diagonally, intersecting with both the east–west streets and north–south avenues. Broadway's intersections with avenues, marked by "squares" (some merely triangular slivers of open space), have induced some interesting architecture, such as the Flatiron Building.
  At Union Square, Broadway crosses 14th Street, merges with Fourth Avenue, and continues its diagonal uptown course from the Square's northwest corner; Union Square is the only location wherein the physical section of Broadway is discontinuous in Manhattan (other portions of Broadway in Manhattan are pedestrian-only plazas). At Madison Square, the location of the Flatiron Building, Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, and is discontinuous to vehicles for a one-block stretch between 24th and 25th Streets. At Greeley Square (West 33rd Street), Broadway crosses Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), and is discontinuous to vehicles. Macy's Herald Square department store, one block north of the vehicular discontinuity, is located on the northwest corner of Broadway and West 34th Street and southwest corner of Broadway and West 35th Street; 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 the city'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.
  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, 2007.
caption: A view of Broadway in 1909
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