Not everyone knows exactly what Broadway is. Broadway is a 13 mile street in New York City’s Theatre District, and any venue with 500 seats or more is called a Broadway Theatre. Today there are 41 Broadway theatres. The street runs through Manhattan and the Bronx and eventually ends in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Native Americans carved the Wickquasgeck trail through Manhattan Island long before Europeans arrived. The Dutch widened and renamed the road in the 17th century. When the English took over in 1664, they renamed it Broadway for its unusual width.
Theater was always very active in New York every since the 18th century. In 1750, Walter Murray and Thomas Keane established the first actual theater in New York in 1750. They established a theatre company on Nassau Street that held 280 people. Shakespeare plays and some ballad operas were performed at the theater. Theaters continued to open after that and was becoming increasingly popular. When Niblo’s Garden opened in 1829, it quickly became a premiere nightspot in New York. Niblo’s Garden was a Broadway theatre on Broadway and Prince Street. It had 3,000 seats and presented lots of forms of entertainment including musicals. In 1899, Oscar Hammerstein opened his 1000 seat Victoria Theater, which was on 42nd street and classified as a Broadway theater.
Broadway theaters continued to be opened and drew attention. Shakespeare plays were being performed at this time, and musicals were gaining popularity as well. The area developed in the next decades as transportation improved and poverty decreased. The street turned into a central hub for theater. Some of the oldest theaters on Broadway that were build in the early 1900s are still in operation today. These include the Hudson, Lyceum, and New Amsterdam.
Sources cited:
Ao, Lundin, E., & Hoosevelt, T. (2021, March 27). The history of Broadway. History Things. Retrieved February 6, 2022, from https://historythings.com/the-history-of-broadway/
BWW, T. (2021, December 19). A brief history of Broadway. BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved February 6, 2022, from https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/A-Brief-History-of-Broadway-20211219
Spotlight on Broadway. Broadway History | Spotlight on Broadway. (n.d.). Retrieved February 6, 2022, from https://www.spotlightonbroadway.com/broadway-history
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