Broadway Theatre District

The Broadway Theatre District in New York City, located in the heart of Midtown, takes its name from the much longer road that runs 13 miles through Manhattan and another 2 miles through the Bronx before exiting north from the city, where it runs an additional 18 miles through the municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-On-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown, and Sleepy Hollow, where it terminates in Westchester County. It is the oldest north–south main road in New York City and formed the basis for one of the primary thoroughfares of the preceding Dutch New Amsterdam colony.

Today, Broadway is best known as the heart of the American commercial theatrical industry. In fact, the word is used as a metonym for the area, in addition to referring to alternative nearby theatrical ventures, such as “Off-Broadway” (having between 100 and 500 seats) and “Off-Off-Broadway” (having less than 100 seats and often being non-commercial or avant garde in nature). The term “Broadway” also refers to the theatrical performances themselves, presented in any of the district’s 41 professional theatres (with over 500 seats). Along with London’s West End, Broadway represents the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. The majority of Broadway shows are musicals, which became enormously influential forms of American popular culture and contributed to making New York City the cultural capital of the Western Hemisphere.

Despite the name, only three of the theatres are physically located on Broadway itself, namely, the Broadway Theatre, the Palace Theatre, and the Winter Garden Theatre. The rest are located on numbered cross streets extending one block south of Times Square on West 41st Street and running north along either side of Broadway to West 65th Street, with the highest concentration of theaters located between 42nd Street and 49th Street. The Vivian Beaumont Theater, located in Lincoln Center, is the furthest north and west of the active theaters, while the Nederlander Theatre is the southernmost, and the Belasco Theatre is the westernmost space. The oldest Broadway theaters still in use are the Hudson Theatre, Lyceum Theatre, and New Amsterdam Theatre, all opened in 1903, while the most recently constructed theater is the Lyric Theatre, built in 1998. The largest of the Broadway theaters is the 1933-seat Gershwin Theatre, while the smallest is the 597-seat Hayes Theater.

• Attended: On Broadway
  • 2001 (Lyceum Theatre – “The Play What I Wrote”)
  • 2014 (Brooks Atkinson Theatre – “Love Letters”)
  • 2014 (Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre – “It’s Only a Play”)
  • 2019 (Broadway Theatre – “King Kong”, top)
  • 2019 (Ethel Barrymore Theater – “The Band’s Visit”)
  • 2019 (Belasco Theatre – “Network”, above)
• Attended: Off-Broadway
  • 2014 (The Snapple Theater – “Perfect Crime”, the longest-running play in New York City history with over 12,000 performances!)
  • 2014 (The Snapple Theater – “The Fantasticks”, the world’s longest-running musical with well over 17,162 performances!)