Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, laid out in Manhattan by its native inhabitants,note which meandered through marshes and rocks along the entire length of the island of Manhattan.note

After the arrival of the Dutch, the path was widened9 and soon became the main road that crossed the island of Manhattan from the colony of New Amsterdam, located at its southern end. Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David Pietersz. de Vries mentions it for the first time in his diary of the year 1642 ("the road of the Wickquasgeck through which the Indians passed daily"). The Dutch called it Heeren Wegh or Heeren Straat, which means "gentlemen's road" or "gentlemen's street" -reproducing the name of a similar street in Amsterdam-; it was renamed Broadway (literally, "broad road") after the British took over the city, due to its unusual width.10​11​9​12​13​note 4​

Although the street name is now simply Broadway, on a 1776 map of New York it appears as Broadway Street (literally, "Broadway Street").16 In the mid-18th century, part of Broadway in what is now Lower Manhattan it was known as Great George Street.17

In the eighteenth century, Broadway ended north of Wall Street, where traffic continued north on the East Side via Eastern Post Road and on the West Side via Bloomingdale Road. This last street, which was opened in 1703, continued to 117th Street and contributed to the development of the modern Upper West Side as an exclusive residential area. In 1868, the stretch of Bloomingdale Road between 59th (in the Grand Circle, present-day Columbus Circle) and 155th streets was paved and widened, becoming an avenue with garden medians,18 and was called Western Boulevard19 or The Boulevard.18 An 1897 official city map shows a segment of present-day Broadway in the vicinity of Washington Heights as Kingsbridge Road.20 On February 14, 1899, the Broadway name was extended to the entire Broadway/Bloomingdale axis. /Boulevard/Kingsbridge.21​