Columbus Circle in the context of "The Great White Way"

The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper West Side is adjacent to the neighborhoods of Hell's Kitchen to the south, Columbus Circle to the southeast, and Morningside Heights to the north.

Like the Upper East Side on the opposite side of Central Park, the Upper West Side is an affluent, primarily residential area with many of its residents working in commercial areas of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. Like the Museum Mile district on the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side is considered one of Manhattan's cultural and intellectual hubs, with Columbia University and Barnard College located just to the north of the neighborhood, the American Museum of Natural History located near its center, the New York Institute of Technology in the Columbus Circle proximity and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School located at the south end.

Broadway (/ˈbrɔːdweɪ/) is a street and major thoroughfare in the U.S. state of New York. The street runs from Battery Place at Bowling Green in the south of Manhattan for 13 mi (20.9 km) through the borough, over the Broadway Bridge, and 2 mi (3.2 km) through the Bronx, exiting north from New York City to run an additional 18 mi (29.0 km) through the Westchester County municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Tarrytown, and Sleepy Hollow, after which the road continues, but is no longer called "Broadway". The latter portion of Broadway north of the George Washington Bridge/I-95 underpass comprises a portion of U.S. Route 9.

It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, with much of the current street said to have begun as the Wickquasgeck trail before the arrival of Europeans. This then formed the basis for one of the primary thoroughfares of the Dutch New Amsterdam colony, which continued under British rule, although most of it did not bear its current name until the late 19th century. Some portions of Broadway in Manhattan are interrupted for continuous vehicle traffic, including Times Square, Herald Square, and Union Square, and instead used as pedestrian-only plazas. South of Columbus Circle, the road is one-way going southbound.

59th Street is a crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, running from York Avenue and Sutton Place on the East Side of Manhattan to the West Side Highway on the West Side. The three-block portion between Columbus Circle and Grand Army Plaza is also known as Central Park South, since it forms the southern border of Central Park. There is a gap in the street between Ninth Avenue/Columbus Avenue and Columbus Circle, where the Deutsche Bank Center is located. While the Central Park South section is a bidirectional street, most of 59th Street carries one-way traffic.

59th Street forms the border between Midtown Manhattan and Upper Manhattan. North of 59th Street, the neighborhoods of the Upper West Side and Upper East Side continue on either side of Central Park. On the West Side, Manhattan's numbered avenues are renamed north of 59th Street: Eighth Avenue (at Columbus Circle) becomes Central Park West; Ninth Avenue is renamed Columbus Avenue; Tenth Avenue is renamed Amsterdam Avenue; and Eleventh Avenue becomes West End Avenue.

Eighth Avenue is a major north–south avenue on the west side of Manhattan in New York City, carrying northbound traffic below 59th Street. It is one of the original avenues of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 to run the length of Manhattan, though today the name changes twice: At 59th Street/Columbus Circle, it becomes Central Park West, where it forms the western boundary of Central Park, and north of 110th Street/Frederick Douglass Circle, it is known as Frederick Douglass Boulevard before merging onto Harlem River Drive north of 155th Street.

The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, commonly known as the Javits Center, is a large convention center on Eleventh Avenue between 34th Street and 38th Street in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by architect James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. The space frame structure was constructed from 1979 to 1986 and was named to honor Jacob Javits, the United States Senator for New York. When the Javits Center opened, it replaced the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle as the city's major convention facility; the Coliseum was subsequently demolished and replaced by Time Warner Center.

The Javits Center is operated and maintained by the New York Convention Center Operating Corporation, a New York State public-benefit corporation. As of 2021, the Javits Center has a total interior area of 3.3 million square feet (310,000 m). It is billed as one of the busiest convention centers in the United States. It has undergone expansions throughout its history, with the most recent expansion being completed in 2021 and adding 1.2 million square feet to the building. Plans have also been made for the Javits Center to have panels providing solar power.

The Hearst Tower is a building at the southwest corner of 57th Street and Eighth Avenue, near Columbus Circle, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It is the world headquarters of media conglomerate Hearst Communications, housing many of the firm's publications and communications companies. The Hearst Tower consists of two sections, with a total height of 597 feet (182 m) and 46 stories. The six lowest stories form the Hearst Magazine Building (also known as the International Magazine Building), designed by Joseph Urban and George B. Post & Sons, which was completed in 1928. Above it is the Hearst Tower addition, designed by Norman Foster and finished in 2006.

The building's main entrance is on Eighth Avenue. The original structure is clad with stone and contains six pylons with sculptural groups. The tower section above has a glass-and-metal facade arranged as a diagrid, or diagonal grid, which doubles as its structural system. The original office space in the Hearst Magazine Building was replaced with an atrium during the Hearst Tower's construction. The tower is certified as a green building as part of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

The 25th Academy Awards were held on March 19, 1953, at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, and the NBC International Theatre in New York City, to honor the films of 1952. It was the first Oscars ceremony to be televised, the first ceremony to be held in Hollywood and New York simultaneously, and the only year in which the New York ceremonies were held in the NBC International Theatre on Columbus Circle, which was shortly thereafter demolished and replaced by the New York Coliseum.

This ceremony was the first to be broadcast on television; the Academy, long resistant of television, paid NBC $100,000 to televise the event.