Something I learned today: What is now Broadway in Manhattan was once a Lenape Indian trail called the Wickquasgeck Trail. When the Dutch settled here in the 1600s they built on the trail and it eventually became Broadway, which is (I think) the only street that runs the entire length of Manhattan island. So the road that is now Broadway has been around for at least 400 years, and who knows for how long the Lenape were using it.
(I learned about this from this post on Gothamist about a bicyclist who made a video riding the entire length of Broadway from the northern tip of Manhattan to the southern tip.)
Something I knew from before: the name Manhattan comes from the Lenape word Mannahatta which means “island of many hills” or something like that. But Manhattan isn’t as hilly as it used to be. When the island was developed, hundreds of feet were shaved off of some of the hills to make way for construction projects. There are still some hills which are pretty high in the northern half of Manhattan, though. I once had a professor who told us that there’s a hill, I think in Harlem or Washington Heights, where if you stand at the very top and look south towards Midtown you are eye level with the top of the Empire State Building. I’ve been meaning to get to the top of that hill.
