In 1885, the Broadway commercial district was overrun with telephone, telegraph, and electrical lines. This view was north from Cortlandt and Maiden Lane.

Broadway was originally the Quickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants. Wickquasgeck means "birch-bark country" in the Algonquianlanguage. This trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island.

Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail soon became the main road through the island from Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David Pietersz. de Vries gives the first mention of it in his journal for the year 1642 ("the Wickquasgeck Road over which the Indians passed daily"). The Dutch named the road "Heerestraat". Although current street signs are simply labeled as "Broadway", in a 1776 map of New York City, Broadway is explicitly labeled "Broadway Street". In the mid-eighteenth century, part of Broadway in what is now lower Manhattan was known as Great George Street. An 1897 City Map shows a segment of Broadway as Kingsbridge Road in the vicinity of what is now the George Washington Bridge.

In the 18th century, Broadway ended at the town commons north of Wall Sreet, where traffic continued up the East Side of the island via Eastern Post Road and the West Side via Bloomingdale Road. The western Bloomingdale Road would be widened and paved during the 19th century, and called "Western Boulevard" or "The Boulevard" north of the Grand Circle, now called Columbus Circle. On February 14, 1899, the name "Broadway" was extended to the entire Broadway/Bloomingdale/Boulevard road.