On the Upper West Side, the Broadway Malls form the median of one of the City’s most famous streets. The City first acquired the land for Broadway, or Bloomingdale Road, as it was known then, in 1855. Bloomingdale Road was a main thoroughfare connecting the Dutch village of Bloomingdale, near West 90th Street, to lower Manhattan. After Central Park interrupted the flow of Manhattan’s new street grid plan, the Board of Commissioners of Central Park reexamined the layout of the streets on the Upper West Side. In 1866, the State Legislature authorized the City to widen the thoroughfare and a plan released in November 1867 called for the straightening of the road.