It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, with much of the current street allegedly beginning as the Wickquasgeck trail before the arrival of Europeans.

This then 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.

[notes 4] Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail was widened[2] and soon became the main road through the island from Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip.

[citation needed] In her 1832 book Domestic Manners of the Americans, Fanny Trollope wrote of her impressions of New York City in general and of Broadway in particular: This noble street may vie with any I ever saw, for its length and breadth, its handsome shops, neat awnings, excellent trottoir, and well-dressed pedestrians.

[27] In May 2013, the NYCDOT decided to redesign Broadway between 35th and 42nd Streets for the second time in five years, owing to poor connections between pedestrian plazas and decreased vehicular traffic.

A bend in front of Grace Church allegedly avoids an earlier tavern; from 10th Street it begins its long diagonal course across Manhattan, headed almost due north.

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.

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.

[44] From Columbus Circle northward, Broadway becomes a wide boulevard to 169th Street; it retains landscaped center islands that separate northbound from southbound traffic.

The wide intersection of the two thoroughfares has historically been the site of numerous traffic accidents and pedestrian casualties, partly due to the long crosswalks.

For many years, all traffic on Broadway flowed on either side of this median and its subway entrance, and its uptown lanes went past it along the western edge of triangular Verdi Square.

In 2001 and 2002, renovation of the historic 72nd Street station and the addition of a second subway control house and passenger shelter on an adjacent center median just north of 72nd Street, across from the original building, resulted in the creation of a public plaza with stone pavers and extensive seating, connecting the newer building with Verdi Square, and making it necessary to divert northbound traffic to Amsterdam Avenue for one block.

Drivers can either continue along Amsterdam Avenue to head uptown or turn left on West 73rd Street to resume traveling on Broadway.

Several notable apartment buildings are in close proximity to this intersection, including The Ansonia, its ornate architecture dominating the cityscape here.

The road heads north and passes historically important apartment houses such as the Belnord, the Astor Court Building, and the Art Nouveau Cornwall.

At 107th Street, Broadway merges with West End Avenue, with the intersection forming Straus Park with its Titanic Memorial by Augustus Lukeman.

[55] Broadway then passes the campus of Columbia University at 116th Street in Morningside Heights, in part on the tract that housed the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum from 1808 until it moved to Westchester County in 1894.

Broadway climbs to the nearby ridgetop runs parallel to the river and the railroad, a few blocks east of both as it passes St. John's Riverside Hospital.

[65] It remains Broadway as it leaves Yonkers for Hastings-on-Hudson, where it splits into separate north and south routes for 0.6 miles (1.0 km).

After intersecting with Ashford Avenue, Broadway passes Mercy College, then turns left again at the center of town just past South Presbyterian Church, headed for equally comfortable Ardsley-on-Hudson and Irvington.

After crossing under the Thruway and I-87 again, here concurrent with I-287, and then intersecting with the four-lane NY 119, where 119 splits off to the east, Broadway becomes the busy main street of Tarrytown.

[68] Broadway expands to four lanes at the trumpet intersection with NY 117, where it finally ends and U.S. 9 becomes Albany Post Road (and Highland Avenue) at the northern border of Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Canyon of Heroes is occasionally used to refer to the section of lower Broadway in the Financial District that is the location of the city's ticker-tape parades.

[69] While typical sports championship parades have been showered with some 50 tons of confetti and shredded paper, the V-J Day parade on August 14–15, 1945 – marking the end of World War II – was covered with 5,438 tons of paper, based on estimates provided by the New York City Department of Sanitation.

[70] More than 200 black granite strips embedded in the sidewalks along the Canyon of Heroes list honorees of past ticker-tape parades.

The phrase "Great White Way" has been attributed to Shep Friedman, columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph in 1901, who lifted the term from the title of a book about the Arctic by Albert Paine.

[74] A portrait of Broadway in the early part of the 20th century and "The Great White Way" late at night appeared in "Artist In Manhattan" (1940)[75] written by the artist-historian Jerome Myers: Early morn on Broadway, the same light that tips the mountain tops of the Colorado canyons gradually discloses the quiet anatomy, the bare skeletons of the huge iron signs that trellis the sky, now denuded of the attractions of the volcanic night.

Almost lifeless, the tired entertainers of the night clubs and their friends straggle to their rooms, taximen compare notes and earnings, the vast street scene has had its curtain call, the play is over.

Gone are the old-time Broadway oyster bars and chop houses that were the survivors of a tradition of their sporting patrons, the bon vivants of Manhattan.

Gone are the days when the Hoffman House flourished on Madison Square, with its famous nudes by Bouguereau; when barrooms were palaces, on nearly every corner throughout the city; when Steve Brodie, jumping from Brooklyn Bridge, splashed the entire country with publicity; when Bowery concert halls dispensed schooners of beer for a nickel, with a stage show thrown in; when Theis's Music Hall still resounded on 14th Street with its great mechanical organ, the wonder of its day, a place of beauty, with fine paintings and free company and the frankest of female life.