Why Broadway Meanders up Manhattan’s Grid
New York's Most Iconic Street Grew Organically From Colonial Cowpath Into an Allegorical Strand
I first saw Broadway from the air. It was 1990 and I was flying with my architecture class from the University of Florida up to Boston so we could learn about cities. Our silver Eastern Airlines plane flew low—alarmingly low, I thought at the time—over Manhattan and soared up the island south to north, the pilot alerting us to the view of the Big Apple below. I could clearly pick out Broadway because, as I had read, it didn’t follow the grid but meandered, an errant thread weaving its way …
