Park Avenue
Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard[4] which carries north and southbound traffic in the borough of Manhattan. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east. Park Avenue's entire length was formerly called Fourth Avenue; the title still applies to the section between Cooper Square and 14th Street.[5] The avenue is called Union Square East between 14th and 17th Streets, and Park Avenue South between 17th and 32nd Streets.
The entirety of Park Avenue was originally known as Fourth Avenue and carried the tracks of the New York and Harlem Railroad starting in the 1830s.[6] The railroad originally ran through an open cut through Murray Hill, which was covered with grates and grass between 34th and 40th Street in the early 1850s. A section of this "park" was later renamed Park Avenue in 1860.[7] Park Avenue's original southern terminus was at 34th Street, and the newly renamed Park Avenue was given its own house-numbering system separate from that of Fourth Avenue. The address 1 Park Avenue was assigned to a house at 101 East 34th Street, at the northeast corner of Park Avenue and 34th Street.[8]
The Harlem Railroad was later incorporated into the New York Central Railroad, and a terminal for the New York Central at 42nd Street, the Grand Central Depot, opened in 1871.[9]: 3 But the tracks laid to the new terminal proved problematic. There were originally no grade-separated crossings of the railroads between 42nd and 59th Streets.[10] As such, they required railroad crossings along Fourth Avenue, which resulted in frequent accidents; seven people died within 12 days of the Hudson River Railroad's move to Grand Central.[11]
In 1872, shortly after the opening of Grand Central Depot, New York Central owner Cornelius Vanderbilt proposed the Fourth Avenue Improvement Project.[9] The tracks between 48th and 56th Streets were to be moved into a shallow open cut,[12] while the segment between 56th and 97th Streets, which was in a rock cut, would be covered over.[9][a] After the improvements were completed in 1874, the railroads, approaching Grand Central Depot from the north, descended into the Park Avenue Tunnel at 96th Street and continued underground into the new depot.[9] As part of the project, Fourth Avenue was transformed into a boulevard with a median strip that covered the railroad's ventilation grates.[14][15][9]: 4 Eight footbridges crossed the tracks between 45th and 56th Streets, and there were also vehicular overpasses at 45th and 48th Streets.[9]: 4 The boulevard north of Grand Central was renamed Park Avenue in 1888.[16]
A fatal collision between two trains occurred under Park Avenue in 1902, in part because the smoke coming from the steam trains obscured the signals.[17][18] The New York state legislature subsequently passed a law to ban all steam trains in Manhattan.[19] By December 1902, as part of an agreement with the city, New York Central agreed to put the approach to Grand Central Station from 46th to 59th Streets in an open cut under Park Avenue, and to upgrade the tracks to accommodate electric trains. Overpasses would be built across the open cut at most of the cross-streets.[20] The new electric-train terminal, Grand Central Terminal, was opened in 1913.[21]
After the electric trains were buried underground, the area around Park Avenue in the vicinity of Grand Central was developed into several blocks worth of prime real estate called Terminal City. Stretching from 42nd to 51st Streets between Madison and Lexington Avenues, it came to include the Chrysler Building and other prestigious office buildings; luxury apartment houses along Park Avenue; and an array of high-end hotels that included the Marguery, Park Lane, and Waldorf Astoria.[22] In 1929, New York Central built its headquarters in a 34-story building (now called the Helmsley Building), straddling Park Avenue north of the terminal.[23]
