If Washington Heights had a central focal point it would probably be the corner of 181st and Broadway. This busy intersection where the RKO Coliseum, the old Harlem Savings Bank, and Nedicks, once stood has always been a busy hub of Washington Heights social life going back to Colonial times.

the earliest depiction of the intersection can be seen in this image of how the intersection looked in 1856.The Blue Bell inn was a tavern as well as a place to rest on journeys up Kings Road, as Broadway was once known. The Inn was demolished in 1915.

1912

In its place a theatre to service the growing new community was built

The theater was becoming a popular American institution by the late 19th century. In 1917 show business impresario BS Moss bought the property to build the city's biggest showplace which he aptly named BS Moss' Coliseum. Vaudeville was becoming very popular and the Coliseum became one of the most popular vaudeville houses in New York. Moss's large vaudeville house would host every vaudeville act of the next three decades. Everybody in vaudeville including Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, Charley Chaplin and WC Fields played there

1922

The Motion picture industry was also growing, and was to eventually end vaudeville. Vaudeville's BF Keith saw the writing on the wall. In 1928 the property was bought by a firm that was building profitable theatres throughout the economically expanding New York City area. The luxurious apartment houses being built in the Heights were going up by leaps and bounds, and so was the entertainment business.

1943

By that time Washington Heights was one of the most desirable places to live in New York City. Many buildings had doormen and canopied entrances to the Street as the apartment buildings of Fifth Avenue have today. Numerous trolley routes and the new IRT and IND Subway lines provided quick transportation to the plentiful downtown jobs. The immigrants in the downtown cold water flats who wanted a better life for their children moved uptown, where private bathrooms and hot water out of faucets were standard. 181st Street became the main shopping area of this burgeoning community.

Waves upon waves of Irish, German, Italian, Greek, and Chinese immigrants shopped in the thousands of businesses that once occupied these streets. These businesses were often owned by the inhabitants of the heights. The profits they earned sent thousands of their children to Colleges and Universities to attain the higher education they never could. Soon, people became tempted by the sprawling nearby "country" areas of nearby New Jersey and Queens in a never ending quest to live better and partake in the dream of home ownership. The common denominator of all the generations that have inhabited the "heights" has been that they have all shopped on 181st Street!