Description

When did Broadway become Broadway? How did Broadway begin and who invented Broadway? The development of the artform cannot be attributed to a single person. New York City had a theatre presence as early as the mid 1700s, but not until the late 1800s did most theatres move uptown to the area we know today as the Theater District, which at the time was made up mostly of family residences and farms. As the area developed in the following decades, transportation improved, poverty decreased, and the neighborhood blossomed as a central hub to produce theatre. Some of the oldest Broadway theaters that are still in operation today were built in the first years of the 1900s, including the Hudson, Lyceum and New Amsterdam. What was the first Broadway show ever? The first work that fits the mold of what we would today consider a musical was the five-and-a-half hour-long The Black Crook, which played 474 performances in 1866.