THE GREAT WIDE WAY

by Cynthia MacGregor

Probably the most famous street in New York is Broadway, a name that is synonymous with Theatre. The street name derives from an incident in the early days, when an opera diva, a Valkyrie type, stood outside the opera house and a passing theatregoer asked, “How much does that broad weigh?” The theatrical neighborhood is sometimes known as “The Great White Way.” Contrary to popular rumor, this is not because of the former scarcity of actors of any race other than Caucasian.

Back in pre-Colonial days, New York was known as New Hamster Dam. This was because of an early experiment that failed, in which the Dutch settlers tried to change the course of the Hudson River using small animals intended to emulate beavers in their work. When the little critters, who had been imported by the million, proved to have the wrong kind of teeth to get the job done, the Dutch settlers gave up on the project and resigned themselves that water would always separate Manhattan from Staten. “Water we going to do?” they despaired.

“What are we going to do with all these hamsters?” was an even more immediate question, one resolved with a culinary solution, by way of a dish then known as hamster-and-eggs. Over the years, the pronunciation (and the chief ingredient) have changed slightly.

The junior settlers were thrilled with the fact that the project hadn’t worked. Now they could go around saying, “The dam project failed, the dam project failed,” and not get in Dutch. This is because increasing numbers of them were now English.

Some of these early settlers put on amateur theatricals up and down Broadway. This gave other settlers somewhere to go on Saturday night. The Indians liked to spend Saturday night playing poker. They couldn’t play Draw Poker as they had no pens or pencils, but they did play another variety of poker. In their version, the winner was required to go off into the forest and search for wild donkeys. Of course you’ve heard of their game—it was called Poker Hunt Ass.

But the early settlers weren’t very big card players, so they put on shows instead. In the beginning, there were no theatres, and the shows were put on in the middle of the street. The settlers chose Broadway, because it was the widest street. It later became known as “The Great Wide Way,” but as you have already seen above, that name eventually got corrupted—like so much else in New York.

Broadway starts at the southern tip of Manhattan and goes clear up to the northern end. It thus became known as the longest-running street in town, so naturally it became host to some of the longest-running shows.

Food was scarce in the early years of New York, so the settlers were reluctant to pelt bad actors with rotten tomatoes or eggs, as was the quaint and charming custom of the day elsewhere. Instead, it was decided to punish them. Those were the days when thieves, witches, and butchers who weighed their thumbs with your rump roast were sentenced to be put in the stocks. Soon bad actors were added to the list of miscreants who were subject to that treatment. This was the origin of actors playing in summer stock…though only summer stock—some aren’t.

The stocks were located in the southern end of the island, and if there was no good show playing uptown, the settlers would all troop down to the tip of the island to enjoy watching people get punished. Vendors sold peanuts, popcorn, and Cracker Jacks in open stalls nearby, in an area that came to be called The Stocks Market.

As more and more settlers move into the fledgling city, some of them started businesses, and they got the money to do so in some cases by selling shares in their burgeoning companies. (Or their fishing companies or their trading-with-the-Indians companies.) Most of the sales of these shares took place just a few blocks from the southern end of Broadway. Over the years, many companies failed to succeed, and the shares became worthless. About all these shares were good for was papering over the rough-hewn lumber that formed the walls of those early houses. People would leave the exchange with worthless shares in hand and say, “I’ve got more wallpaper. Anyone want to buy some wallpaper?” Thus the area became known as Wall Street.

Just a few blocks from the area where the stock market was flourishing was the stretch of water where the proposed Hamster Dam had failed to block the Tide ... or Fab or Cheer or Ivory. Since the water still flowed there, people fished there, as well as gathering oysters in search of pearls. Since New Amsterdam—or Noo Yawk, as it was now called—was already becoming a cultured city, naturally the fisherman who opened the oysters found cultured pearls. There were in fact many pearls to be found—and there have been many perils to be found in New York ever since.
(cont'd tomorrow)