Washington Heights Guide
Search

Area

181st Street Strip (East of Broadway)

The busy shopping street along W 181st St from Broadway toward Amsterdam Ave, with side stretches of St. Nicholas Ave and Broadway. It is the commercial heart of the Washington Heights BID.

Roughly W 181st St from Broadway east to Amsterdam Ave, plus St. Nicholas Ave from about W 179th to W 183rd St and Broadway from about W 179th to W 182nd St. The Business Improvement District also continues west to Fort Washington Ave, where it overlaps Hudson Heights Downtown.

Looking east along W 181st St in Washington Heights as it approaches the Washington Bridge over the Harlem River (photo from 2008).
Jim.henderson (opens in a new tab)Public domain
The corner of Broadway and W 181st Street with the former Coliseum building
Jim.henderson (opens in a new tab)CC0 (opens in a new tab)
The former Coliseum Theatre at Broadway and W 181st Street
Beyond My Ken (opens in a new tab)CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab)
W 181st Street looking east toward the Washington Bridge
Jim.henderson (opens in a new tab)Public domain
Subway stair at the 181st Street 1 train station on St. Nicholas Avenue
Jim.henderson (opens in a new tab)Public domain
505 W 181st Street between Audubon and Amsterdam Avenues
Beyond My Ken (opens in a new tab)CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab)
A Dominican community demonstration on W 181st Street in 2020
Génesis Espinosa (opens in a new tab)CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab)
Street-art poetry on the side of 4300 Broadway at W 183rd Street
Beyond My Ken (opens in a new tab)CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab)

The Washington Heights Business Improvement District, founded in 1983, describes its district as 245 commercial storefronts across 29 blocks: W 181st St from Amsterdam Ave to Fort Washington Ave, Broadway between W 179th and 182nd Sts, and St. Nicholas Ave between W 179th and 183rd Sts.

The corner of W 181st St and Broadway has a long history. The Blue Bell Tavern stood on the northwest corner in the 18th century, and in 1915 the 3,500-seat Coliseum Theatre was built on the site. It was demolished in 2021 after the city denied it landmark status, according to Wikipedia. Several Bronx bus routes (Bx3, Bx11, Bx13, Bx35, Bx36) run along W 181st St.

It works as both a shopping street and a transit corridor: the 1 and A trains each stop at 181st St, and the street is a crosstown route for several buses.

Smaller sections

0

No smaller sections are filed here yet.

Places

All places

People and events

All notes

No published people or events are filed under this area yet.

Best of

All guides

Filmed here

All productions