When and how did Broadway become prominent?

Question:Like, when did it become a big thing and what events caused this?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Like, when did it become a big thing and what events caused this?

Broadway became a big deal just before WWI. The invention of electric lights, and the introduction of electric theater marquees, was the beginning of Broadway's popularity.
Entertainment....that's what it was.

http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Manh... The first theatre of any consequence to open after the Revolution was
the Park Theatre, opposite City Hall Park in Park Row in 1798. As Broadway
grew, the theatres grew with it; but there is not now a theatre on Broadway
below Twenty-eighth Street. The circus seems to have been more popular
before 1860 than at present, for there are records of several occupying the
vacant lots of the thoroughfare before that time; some of these developed
later into theatres, as in the case of Niblo's Garden. The same degree of
popularity also extended to the negro minstrels; for while today there is
not a permanent minstrel show on Broadway, if in the city, in those earlier
days there were several companies occupying Broadway houses at the same
time___Christy, Dan Bryant, Kelly and Leon, Campbell, Wood, Pell and
Trowbridge, Morris Brothers, and many