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( Broadway (New York City))
Broadway, as the name implies, is a wide avenue in New York City. While New York has several other Broadways, in the context of the city it usually refers to the Manhattan street. It is the oldest north-south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to the first New Amsterdam settlement. The name Broadway is an English translation of the Dutch name, Breede weg. A stretch of Broadway is famous as the pinnacle of the American theater industry. Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush land of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants.[1] 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 New 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".[2] 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 at the end of the century the whole old road (the Bloomingdale Road and what was previously called Broadway) was renamed Broadway. 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; through traffic is blocked at Times Square, where it is prevented from crossing Seventh Avenue directly. From the northern shore of Manhattan, it 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. US 9 continues to be known as Broadway through its junction with NY 117. Diagonally crossing the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 of Manhattan streets, its intersections with avenues have been marked by "squares" (some merely triangular slivers of open space) and induced some interesting architecture, such as the famous Flatiron Building.
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