Street networks tend to be pretty sticky. Meaning, they tend not to change very much, or at all, over time. We have spoken about this before, over the years.

A good example of this is Broadway in Manhattan. Broadway is a world-famous street. And it's perhaps no coincidence that it's also the only street that runs the full length of Manhattan and breaks across the city's regular street grid.

The exact reasons for this are somewhat nuanced. And for a more fulsome backstory, I recommend you watch Daniel Steiner's recent video on the topic (embedded above).

It is alleged that Broadway started out as the Wickquasgeck trail. Meaning it pre-dates the arrival of Europeans to the island. But regardless, we know that it came before New York's famed Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which is the plan that gave the city its grid.

So it would appear that, sometimes, even the most rational of plans can be no match for something even stronger: a street that already exists.

I am in New York right now and I spent the day riding around on a Citi Bike looking at architecture. Atop two wheels is such a fast way to get around.

The first stop was the new transportation hub at the World Trade Center. Here’s a photo of the Oculus:

The main station house (above) is absolutely breathtaking, but the exterior (in particular the entrances) felt a bit unresolved to me.

Here’s a photo of 56 Leonard by Herzog & de Meuron:

People call it the Jenga tower.

And here’s a photo of a building on Broadway in Soho:

Look at how the overhangs fold down and adjust the window dimensions so that it matches the building to the left. Bigger windows towards Broadway. Smaller windows as you move inward. I thought this was really neat.

And now back to New York City. See you tomorrow.

I was reading the New York Times this morning and I stumbled upon an interesting article about Shubert Alley. I wasn’t aware of Shubert Alley, but I’m sure many of you probably are. It’s a 300-foot long pedestrian-only alley in the theater district of New York. It connects 44th Street and 45th Street and runs west of Broadway.

And apparently it’s a big deal in the theater world – or at least according to Richard Hornby in 1991: “In New York, the desirability of a theatre is inversely proportional to its distance from Shubert Alley.”

But what you may not be aware of is how the alley–which today serves as a public gathering space–was actually created. In 1913 when the Shubert and Booth theaters were built, the fire code dictated that theaters had to have separate fire exits on the sides of their buildings that connected directly to a main street. 

Most of the time this led to blank sidewalls, but in this instance, the Shuberts and their architect Henry Beaumont Herts, decided to run an alley all the way through the block to serve as their emergency exit. 

But what seemingly started as a pragmatic response to a code requirement, ended up creating what some people would consider the heart of the theater district. Sometimes constraints can be a good thing for design.

Image: New York Times