The history of Broadway itself goes back to the middle of the 18^th century, although musicals wouldn’t be born until 100 years later, with The Elves being widely considered Broadway’s first long run musical in 1857.

However, The Elves didn’t have the identity of a traditional musical today, so the official title goes to The Black Crook, which premiered in 1866 and ran for nearly 500 performances despite being over five and a half hours in length.

Musical Comedy

While there were various types of musical developing and taking place in New York at the end of the 1800s, musical comedy was by far the most popular genre, both with audiences and writers who were looking for their best opportunity to breakthrough and become big.

A Trip to Chinatown and A Trip to Coontown were among the biggest hits of the 1890s, the former holding the long run record at over 600 performances for nearly 30 years. Many of the hit songs featured in these musical comedies were written by the leading songwriters and publishers of the day in the world-famous Tin Pan Alley.

20^th Century; Competing with Cinema

Broadway continued to grow in the early part of the 20^th century, and took on a new feeling of glitz and glamour as theatres began using brightly lit signs and facades, leading to it becoming known as ‘The Great White Way.’

Despite the continued popularity of Broadway musicals, the emergence of motion pictures during the 1920s and 1930s proved challenging, while the Great Depression would also hit the industry hard. Broadway began to recover during the Second World War; during the war years, a number of wartime dramas were performed at numerous theatres.

The Golden Age of Broadway & Decline

Following the release of Oklahoma! in 1943, Broadway had cemented a reputation for producing songs that instantly became both local and nationwide hits. You could almost guarantee that the latest musical would be responsible for radio station playlists for years after their release.

The 1950s was Broadway’s most successful era, and many of the elements of 50s musical theatre production remains in place today. The following decade saw a decline in the popularity of Broadway, however, with theatres closing and the whole area becoming run down. Broadway wouldn’t recover from this until well into the 1980s.

Broadway Today

Since the industry picked back up in the 80s, there has been no looking back. Part of the success of Broadway is that seeing a show is considered a ‘must do’ activity during a trip to New York, a city which hosts almost 50million tourists every year.

Today, the longest running Broadway show is The Phantom of the Opera, which opened on January 26, 1988, and is still running at the Majestic Theatre today.

Image Source: Broadway Tour