West Broadway

West Broadway is the most prestigious residential street in Derry, Maine, a broad avenue lined with grand Victorian houses that stand as monuments to the town's old lumber-baron wealth. For the children of the Losers' Club, this street represents an unbridgeable social distance, a world of privilege and acceptance that stands in stark contrast to their own lives on Lower Main Street and the fringes of town. The street's architecture—turrets, cone-shaped caps, mullioned windows, and immaculate lawns—embodies the established power and social hierarchy that the Losers can only observe from the outside.

Geography and Social Divide

West Broadway runs through the affluent heights of Derry, physically elevated above the working-class neighborhoods and the Barrens. This vertical separation mirrors the social chasm between its residents and the Losers. Ben Hanscom, walking past the houses on summer afternoons, notes that the distance between West Broadway and Lower Main Street is "like the distance between Earth and the planet Pluto" . The street is home to the families of Sally Mueller and Greta Bowie, girls whose expensive clothes and permed hair mark them as belonging to a different world from Beverly Marsh, who comes to school in a cheap sweater and a too-big skirt from the Salvation Army .

The Houses and Their Owners

The street features several notable residences. The Muellers' house, near the corner of Witcham and West Broadway, is a red building with turrets on either side and hedges in front, guarded by a gardener who eyes passing children with suspicion . Four houses down stands the Bowies' green-shingled house, its turrets capped with squat cone-shaped things that remind Eddie Kaspbrak of duncecaps. In summer, lawn furniture and a croquet set occupy the side lawn, and Eddie, walking by "casually, like he was on his way to somewhere else," sometimes hears the click of balls and laughter from games he is never invited to join . The Tracker brothers' house is "probably the loveliest of the large houses on that street," a spotlessly white mid-Victorian with green lawns, riotous flower beds, a freshly sealed driveway, and remarkable mullioned windows .

Narrative Significance

West Broadway functions as a spatial symbol of the social exclusion that binds the Losers together. It is a place they can only observe from the outside, a reminder of the class divisions that permeate Derry. The street's grand houses, with their turrets and manicured lawns, stand in stark contrast to the Barrens, the sewers, and the cramped apartments where the Losers live. This physical and social distance reinforces the children's sense of being outsiders, a shared experience that forges their unlikely friendship and their collective resolve to face the horror that lurks beneath the town. The street's residents, like Sally Mueller and Greta Bowie, are among the children who mock and exclude the Losers, embodying the casual cruelty of a social order that has no place for them.