1664 New Amsterdam becomes New York, English warships in the harbor. Looking S on Broadway from the Wall. wwwsavingny.com for reconstructions, 3/15 NYC Fire Museum Opening09-24-11 t1_jby911h wrote
One of the most interesting and impactful decisions the initial New Yorkers made was making streets like Broadway so wide. In the 16/1700s it seems so unnecessary to make these streets so large. Could you imagine lugging over goods to your neighbor across the way so far? But today we are able to have 5 lane N-S streets.
anObscurity t1_jbyiqnx wrote
I'm pretty sure this rendering is an exaggeration, Broadway is definitely not this wide if you compare to the size of the people.
Sapphire_Bombay t1_jbypmyv wrote
Idk...by the time you add sidewalks I'd say it's pretty close.
anObscurity t1_jbzcizk wrote
Yeah maybe you’re right, now I want to go measure it
notqualitystreet t1_jc0lb6z wrote
I’d better go stand in the middle of Broadway just to confirm
biebiedoep t1_jbyuogg wrote
No, it isn't even remotely close.
mavajo t1_jbyx6c6 wrote
I initially had the same impression as you, but I just did some eyeballing based on the size of the people and horse carts - it looks pretty dead on to me, especially once you account for medians, sidewalks, bike paths, etc.
grambell789 t1_jbzx52g wrote
the illustration looks like its pushing 200ft wide and I get 90ft on broadway from building front to building front when i measure on google maps. Damrak in Amsterdam is the equivalent st, its about 75ft wide so maybe they just made broadway slightly wider.
TonyzTone t1_jc27w8l wrote
No way. Looking at the woman in the bottom right, let’s assume she’s 5 ft. tall. You think you get 40 of her laid across the street? I think it’s closer to 20 than it is 40.
grambell789 t1_jc2eqno wrote
ok, ok, i took the wagon at the center and compared it to the with of the road on a pixel basis and it comes out to about 100ft which is about the width of broadway now. makes sense who ever did the illustration did reasearch ahead of time to make it right. I stand corrected.
TonyzTone t1_jc2k0v2 wrote
I think further down the street where the wagons are is Bowling Green, which widens and is more of a town square. So you might be right that there it’s closer to 200ft. and maybe more.
Adriano-Capitano t1_jc306kc wrote
If you pull up Wall Street and Broadway on Google Maps Streetview, it does not look this wide today.
NYC ZOLA website shows the width today as being 74.7' - 75.7' wide in that stretch, going only as wide as 81.8' at Morris Street, two blocks down.
TonyzTone t1_jc37mku wrote
Not quite. The Google maps measure distance shows that, if you include the sidewalks, from the edge of Trinity Church to the edge of the buildings across Broadway, it's about 87 ft.
Morris Street is just the beginning of Bowling Green just where it begins to widen. The widest point of Bowling Green (corner of State Street/Battery Pace across the pedestrian plaza to the eastern edge of Broadway) is at just shy of 300 ft.
clockworkpeon t1_jc0550j wrote
Broadway was built on top of an old Indian trail than spanned the entire length of Manhattan. the Dutch purposely made it very wide so that it could accommodate all the N/S traffic.
ninbushido t1_jc0o4m7 wrote
Awful decision tbh. Gotta start expanding our sidewalks more, cars are killing this city.
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