Description of the attraction
Broadway is the longest street in New York and one of the most famous in the world. It stretches for 29 kilometers through the whole of Manhattan and the Bronx, going further north, but it was the Manhattan part that brought it world fame.
Broadway was once an Indian trail that ran along the island, meandering between rocks and swamps. For Dutch settlers, it immediately became the main road. Broadway is still the main artery of the city, whimsically crossing the strict grid of streets and avenues.
Walking along Broadway is fun but challenging. It can take up to ten hours (including rest and food stops). Knowledgeable people recommend that you wear comfortable shoes, stock up on water, and start your journey from north to south from 225th Street early in the morning.
Walking down Broadway
A pedestrian crosses the Harlem River across the Broadway Bridge. Further - Isham Park, Fort Trion Park with its Cloister Museum … Here Broadway looks neither brilliant nor famous. After walking for many kilometers, the tourist passes by the Trinity Cemetery and the huge Gothic Church of the Intercession and walks along the Upper West Side. But the main part of Broadway is ahead. Past Columbia University, past the Metropolitan Opera building, a tourist walks to Columbus Circle, where the Columbus monument rises. You can relax in Central Park in order to go further with renewed vigor - to the Theater District.
"The Great White Way" - this is how the area between 42nd and 53rd streets is called in New York, which includes the Theater District and Times Square. The nickname appeared at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries due to the fact that Broadway was flooded with advertising lights (in 1880, it became one of the first streets in the United States to be lit with electricity). Around the famous Times Square, and now all the skyscrapers are in billboards, and Broadway theaters, as before, are invited to premieres of musicals. Here Broadway looks the way the tourist imagined it: bright and exciting.
Further, the traveler notes other world famous sights - here is 5th Avenue, here is the "Iron" skyscraper near Madison Square, here is Soho with its cobbled streets, cast-iron facades, galleries and boutiques, here is Woolworth Building, Wall Street and the famous bronze bull, near which everyone is always photographed. This lower stretch of Broadway, from Bowling Green to City Hall Park, called Hero's Canyon, is famous for its tape parades. The first such happened spontaneously in 1886, during the opening of the Statue of Liberty: employees threw telegraph tapes with stock market quotes into the air - like a serpentine. Later, parades (already with real streamers and confetti) were held more than once - for example, in 1927 in honor of Charles Lindbergh, who made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. One of the last parades was held in 2012 in honor of the New York Giants football team.
A tourist who has walked for many hours ends the path at the number one Broadway house (once on the site of this neoclassical building was the headquarters of George Washington). The tourist is tired, but rightfully proud of himself: he has seen Broadway.
