Consider that long before Giovanni da Verrazzano and Henry Hudson explored what is now Manhattan Island, Indians occupied it and what is now Broadway was simply a trail the natives traversed in their daily comings and goings. When Hudson led the Dutch to settle there, the simple trail became a road named Heere Straat and then Breedeweg, which means broad way. The road was a wide path or broad way from the gate in the wall at Wall Street to the entry of an old fort.
Surprisingly, for about a century, Breedeweg was the only road that ran from one end of the island to the other. When the British took control of Manhattan Island from the Dutch, Breedeweg became Broadway and to this day remains New York City's longest street, running from downtown, over the Broadway Bridge and across the Bronx.
Under Dutch rule, stage performances were strictly forbidden. However, the British were not so prudish and in 1750, The Beggar's Opera, New York's first professional musical, opened with five performances. In 1810, Junius Brutus Booth and sons immigrated to America and performed in Broadway theater to become one of the first great American acting families. Over the ensuing years, theaters opened along Broadway's expanse. In 1866, the first truly original Broadway musical opened in the Niblo's Garden auditorium. There followed many burlesque musical comedies.
Beginning in the late 1800s and through the next century, American musicals flourish on Broadway. Productions ranged from the light operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan to the rousing musical by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart and later Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein and the iconic productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Plays such as Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado," Roger's and Hart's "Pal Joey" and "Babes in Arms," Roger's and Hammerstein's "South Pacific" and "The King and I" and Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera" have become legendary and transformed Broadway from a urban street into The Great White Way.
The Great White Way encompasses the 36 New York City theaters between West 41st and 53rd Streets and 6th and 8th Avenues. Although a relatively small area, it has been host to some of the most famous actors, playwrights, producers, directors and productions in the world. This section of Midtown Manhattan picked up the Great White Way moniker on February 3, 1902 when the New York Evening Telegram, commenting on the millions of brilliant lights illuminating theater marquees and billboards advertising the numerous plays, ran a headline: "Found on the Great White Way."