The broadway – 33 miles from bowling green to sleepy hollow

Westchester County, Yonkers, Broadway

„Hey man what are you doing? Photographing this road, Broadway!?
There you are. This road is as fucked up as our country. The lights are out.“

The Broadway – the street of all streets – we know today is of Indian origin. Originally it was called Wickquasgeck Trail – birch bark trail – by the Lenape, the native people of this region. Even then it stretched from the southern tip of Manhattan Island through the rocky swampland to the north through today’s Westchester County to Sleepy Hollow. The road got its final name from the Dutch, whose ‚Breede Weg‘ later became Broadway.

I walked these almost 33 miles – a little more than 50 kilometers – many times in the years 2017-2020. Starting at the southern tip of Manhattan, the high-rises of the financial district, through Manhattan’s business district Midtown with its famous Time Square, the upscale residential areas of the Upper West Side, the up-and-coming Harlem and the proud but mostly not so well-off Bronx, on through small-town Westchester County to rural Sleepy Hollow, this road is a cosmos that shows us a lot of the country. To me, Broadway reflects such a wide variety, both socially and architecturally, that I never expected it to be so diverse.