Broadway: The History and Legacy of New York City's Theater Center and Cultural Heart
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Narrated by:
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Scott Clem
About this listen
Of all the great cities in the world, few personify their country like New York City. As America's largest city and best known immigration gateway into the country, NYC represents the beauty, diversity and sheer strength of the United States, a global financial center that has enticed people chasing the "American Dream" for centuries.
America's prototypical metropolis was once a serene landscape in which Native American tribes farmed and fished, but when European settlers arrived its location on the Eastern seaboard sparked a rapid transformation. Given its history of rapid change, it is ironic that the city's inhabitants often complain about the city's changing and yearn for things to stay the same. The website EV Grieve, whose name plays on the idea that the East Village "grieves" for the history and character the neighborhood loses every day to market forces and gentrification, regularly features a photo of some site, usually of little interest: an abandoned store, a small bodega, a vacant lot. The caption says, simply, that this is what the site looked like on a given day. The editors of the website are determined to document everything and anything for future generations.
That is hardly a modern phenomenon. New Yorkers have always grieved over the city's continuous upheavals and ever-increasing size and complexity. By the 1820s, Wall Street had lost whatever charm it might have had; former residents complained that two-story houses had given way to intimidating five-story office buildings. The New York Commercial Advertiser noted in 1825 that "Greenwich is no longer a country village," but rather an up-and-coming neighborhood. Today, it's hard to find a history of New York City that doesn't refer to Henry James’s famous 1908 story The Jolly Corner, in which a man returns to New York after decades abroad only to be horrified by an unfamiliar hellscape of commercial growth. He finds his once-jolly childhood home nearly buried "among the dreadful multiplied numberings which seemed to him to reduce the whole place to some vast ledger-page, overgrown, fantastic, of ruled and criss-crossed lines and figures." The once-beloved city has transformed itself into "the mere gross generalisation of wealth and force and success." That childhood home—an 1830s townhouse—in fact belonged to the James family on Washington Square in Greenwich Village. It was destroyed to make way for New York University, which is today embroiled in yet another real estate saga as it plans to expand once again.
Broadway is more than just jazz hands, glittering costumes, tap numbers, and catchy show tunes that loop in one's mind for hours on end with the mildest provocation. Every year, thousands upon thousands of Broadway hopefuls climb on top of one another to hoist themselves onto the grand stage. Countless hours of training, coupled with blood, sweat, and tears, are poured into the craft, all for a chance to see their names emblazoned across the playbills and marquees – not to mention, perform for potential millions. Behind the dazzling lights and razzle and dazzle of Manhattan's legendary theater district is an equally colorful and riveting history. While hers is a story seasoned with innovative triumphs and remarkable firsts, it is also one plagued with scandal and controversy.
Broadway: The History and Legacy of New York City's Theater Center and Cultural Heart examines the history and legacy of the Big Apple's theater. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Broadway like never before.
©2017 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River EditorsListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Broadway takes us on a mile-by-mile journey that traces the gradual evolution of the 17th century's Brede Wegh, a muddy cow path in a backwater Dutch settlement, to the 20th century's Great White Way. We learn why one side of the street was once considered more fashionable than the other; witness construction of the Ansonia Apartments, Trinity Church, and the Flatiron Building and the burning of P. T. Barnum's American Museum; and discover that Columbia University was built on the site of an insane asylum.
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Give My Regards To Broadway!
- By Steven on 08-20-18
By: Fran Leadon
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Downtown
- My Manhattan
- By: Pete Hamill
- Narrated by: Pete Hamill
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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In Downtown, Hamill leads us on an unforgettable journey through the city he loves, from the island's southern tip to 42nd Street, combining a moving memoir of his days and nights in New York with a passionate history of its most enduring places and people.
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A frustrating read
- By David Ross on 09-09-05
By: Pete Hamill
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Wonderland
- How Play Made the Modern World
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Got to Now and Extra Life, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that, throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.
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It will delight you
- By T. Leach on 02-09-17
By: Steven Johnson
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The Black Russian
- By: Vladimir Alexandrov
- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Black Russian is the incredible story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick sought greater freedom in London, then crisscrossed Europe, and - in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time - went to Russia in 1899. Because he found no color line there, Frederick made Moscow his home. He renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas, married twice, acquired a mistress, and took Russian citizenship.
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US Born African Descendant 2 Russian Citizenship
- By Sheila Gibson on 03-14-15
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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My Thoughts Be Bloody
- The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth
- By: Nora Titone, Doris Kearns Goodwin - introduction/notes
- Narrated by: John B. Lloyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
My Thoughts Be Bloody, a sweeping family saga, revives an extraordinary figure whose name has been missing, until now, from the story of President Lincoln's death. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes's older brother by four years, was in his day the biggest star of the American stage. Without an account of Edwin Booth, author Nora Titone argues, the real story of Lincoln's assassin has never been told.
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Wonderful!
- By Tad Davis on 11-30-10
By: Nora Titone, and others
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From Bauhaus to Our House
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrated by: Dennis McKee
- Length: 3 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Tom Wolfe's hands, the strange saga of American architecture in the 20th century makes for both high comedy and intellectual excitement. This is his sequel to The Painted Word, the book that caused such a furor in the art world five years before. Once again Wolfe shows how social and intellectual fashions have determined aesthetic form in our time and how willingly the creators have abandoned personal vision and originality in order to work a la mode.
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So snarky I kept having to back up and repeat
- By Ellen on 04-08-09
By: Tom Wolfe
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The Sound of Music Story
- How a Beguiling Young Novice, a Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing Von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time
- By: Tom Santopietro
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Now Tom Santopietro has written the ultimate Sound of Music fan audiobook with all the inside dope, from behind-the-scenes stories of the filming in Austria and Hollywood to new interviews with Johannes von Trapp and others. Santopietro looks back at the real-life story of Maria von Trapp, goes on to chronicle the sensational success of the Broadway musical, and recounts the story of the near cancellation of the film when Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox.
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A must for super-fans
- By Simone on 07-29-17
By: Tom Santopietro
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Flapper
- A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern
- By: Joshua Zeitz
- Narrated by: Daniella Rabbani
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Blithely flinging aside the Victorian manners that kept her disapproving mother corseted, the New Woman of the 1920's puffed cigarettes, snuck gin, hiked her hemlines, danced the Charleston, and necked in roadsters. More important, she earned her own keep, controlled her own destiny, and secured liberties that modern women take for granted. Her newfound freedom heralded a radical change in American culture.
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Good Book, Poor Performance
- By redsrule1 on 03-16-14
By: Joshua Zeitz
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Eiffel's Tower
- And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris
- By: Dr. Jill Jonnes
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Reminiscent of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, this fascinating account from acclaimed author Jill Jonnes recaptures the 1889 Paris World's Fair. Casting vehement criticism aside, Gustave Eiffel built his tower to be the fair's centerpiece. Perched at the top all summer, he hosted a string of dignitaries.
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Just read the first half
- By Julie W. Capell on 11-08-09
By: Dr. Jill Jonnes
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The Judgment of Paris
- The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Tristan Layton
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris. The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amid scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial.
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Try this!
- By Robert on 10-28-08
By: Ross King
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Apollo's Angels
- A History of Ballet
- By: Jennifer Homans
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 23 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For more than 400 years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to 16th-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed.
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a great book poorly read
- By Anonymous User on 04-14-11
By: Jennifer Homans
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Sidney Poitier
- Man, Actor, Icon
- By: Aram Goudsouzian
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 20 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the first full biography of actor Sidney Poitier, Aram Goudsouzian analyzes the life and career of a Hollywood legend, from his childhood in the Bahamas to his 2002 Oscar for lifetime achievement. Poitier is a gifted actor, a great American success story, an intriguing personality, and a political symbol; his life and career illuminate America's racial history.
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The Man, the Star, the Lightning Rod
- By Susie on 01-28-13
By: Aram Goudsouzian