We made our first trip to New York City as a family in December of 2021. It was for my daughter’s December birthday; it was a spur of the moment decision—but it ended up as one of the best trips we have taken as a family. There is just something about NYC that gets your heart beating fast and your smile a little bigger and your eyes wide with wonder. This is especially true if you are young and experiencing the big city for the first time.
We tried to do as much as we could in just a few days—a trip on the Staten Island Ferry for a good view of the Statue of Liberty, a walk through Central Park, the ice rink and tree at Rockefeller Center, and many a ride on the subway. No trip to New York is complete without a trip to the Great White Way—so we ventured there and had the joy of seeing not one, but two amazing shows. When I used the term Great White Way—my daughter didn’t understand the reference; in fact it made me pause and wonder what that meant as well.
Broadway, or the theater district in NYC, traces its roots back to the mid-18th century when one of the first large theaters opened in lower Manhattan. About that same time, Benjamin Franklin had started experimenting with electricity. Many streets along Broadway started illuminating the pathways with arc lamps—these made light by sparking an electrical current between two electrodes, resulting in a very bright, white light. With the opening of the Olympia Theatre in Longacre Square (later renamed Times Square)—history was made with the installation of the first electric lights at its entrance in 1895. Following Olympia’s lead, other theaters began replacing the smoky, open-flame gaslights with the more modern and bright lights. So, the Great White Way truly described how it looks when you first turned and saw the theater district at night. The name was coined thanks to Shep Friedman, a columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph, when he wrote a story about the area and used the headline, “Found on the Great White Way.”
In recent years, the nickname has gone through a reassessment because of unintentional racial implications. A book by Warren Hoffman, “The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical,” discusses how Broadway is historically white in terms of who is creating shows, making decisions and even in the audience. Hoffman recently updated the book with new discussion about recent changes in theater and the opportunity and controversy around that. In 2020, Whoopi Goldberg who has starred in musicals and produced theater productions, suggested that maybe there should be an alternate nickname for Broadway. “Maybe we can stop calling it ‘the Great White Way’ and replace it with ‘the Great Bright Way,” she said. “It’s not the words; it’s the way we think about it.”
I don’t know if understanding the origin of the name changes anything, there is probably a whole generation or two that would not have even heard of the moniker used. Little changes may not build a better world. And sometimes big changes are just too daunting to even attempt. I think starting somewhere is important —and maybe when we understand better, we will begin to think differently, and then we will act better and together we can make our world a little better too.
– Lori Hall, Executive Director of Missions
