East 86th Street was once nicknamed the German Broadway.
86th Street was mapped in 1811, in the plan that laid out Manhattan’s grid, as one of its wide crosstown streets, 100 feet across. Until the years after World War II, Yorkville on the East Side was a largely German community, and East 86th Street was nicknamed the German Broadway. Yorkville’s early settlement had grown up around the 86th Street stop of the New York and Harlem Railroad.