Park Avenue

Park Avenue

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Park Avenue is a wide boulevard on the east side of Manhattan. It runs roughly north-south, between and parallel to Madison and Lexington Avenues. Originally called Fourth Avenue, most of the stretch was renamed Park Avenue in 1888. Perhaps no modern street has seen such a dramatic fluctuation in property value. Today, Park Avenue is famous for its imposing offices and apartment buildings, which comprise some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

Railroads on 4th Ave.

The New York and Harlem River Railroad was chartered in 1831; by 1837 the company had lain its train tracks on Fourth Avenue from Prince Street (where Fourth Avenue was called the Bowery) as far north as Harlem. [2]

Due largely to the train activity, the Fourth Avenue of the nineteenth century was far from a desirable address. The open tracks exposed residents to smoke, noise, and occasional boiler explosions. [1]

As steam engines grew more powerful and popular, the New York Railroad began running steam-powered trains along the entirety of Fourth Avenue, even as far north as the Bronx and Westchester County. Property owners along Fourth Avenue, dismayed by the steam locomotives chugging up and down their thoroughfares, spewing smoke and cinders, fought to keep steam power at bay. [3]

The Outcry Against Steam Engines

In the face of mass public protest, the city imposed more and more constraints on where the New York Railroad could lay its tracks. First, trains were kept north of 14th Street; later, the southern boundary for locomotives moved up to 26th Street, and finally stopped at 42nd Street. This is why Grand Central Terminal stands astride Park Avenue at 42nd Street today. [4]

The street was renamed Park Avenue in 1888 as a bit of urban marketing - more a wishful portent of things to come than a reflection of the status quo.

Electrific Trains

In 1902, a sensational train accident, precipitated by the dense smoke and steam of the train traffic, galvanized the anti-steam movement. Later that year, the city passed a law requiring that the rail company - now simply called New York Central - replace all its steam engines with electric trains by 1908. [5]

The new electric train lines allowed New York Central to move its entire fleet underground. From 1921 to 1924, the train tracks moved into the tunnels they still occupy today, and Park Avenue above was paved once and for all. With the noxious fumes and bulky trains out of the way, Park Avenue finally had a chance to live up to its new name. [6]

Park Avenue Paved

In the early 1920s, the new Park Avenue was more of a pedestrian promenade than a car-serving thoroughfare. Lush, grassy medians took up most of the width of the street with carriageways about one lane wide on either side.[6a]

In May of 1922, the New York Times published an editorial about the newly refurbished Park Avenue. The paper quoted then-Borough President of Manhattan Julius Miller's boasts about the civic : "The present roadways are 27 feet wide, the sidewalks 15 feet, and the centre strips 56 feet." [7]

For a few years, Park Avenue was, in a sense, both a small park and a functional avenue. The unusual width of the avenue allowed for ample sidewalks; one lane of automobile traffic on either side; and a broad, luxurious footpath in the middle.

At right you can see a median on Park Avenue near 96th Street. These medians were fairly common when Park Avenue was first paved in the early 1920s. [9], [10], [11]

This would not last long, though. Cars were all the rage, and the medians were soon narrowed to make way for increased automobile traffic. [8]

Making Way for Automobiles

In the same editorial of May 1922, the New York Times further quoted Borough President Miller: "It is proposed to reduce the centre strips from 56 feet to 38 feet and to widen the roadways from 27 feet to 36 feet, leaving the sidewalks at their present width of 15 feet." [7] This "sidewalk nibbling," to paraphrase Jane Jacobs, would continue steadily until the 1970s.

It may seem shocking that city planners in the 1920s would squander such a rich opportunity for shared public space. But urban planners at the time, almost without exception, saw the automotive revolution as a surefire way to ensure development, efficiency and utilitarianism. Influential city planners like Frederick Law Olmstead and Daniel Burnham were famously enamored of cars. [8]

Above right: Park Avenue, photographed after the 1922 "improvements" making way for more car traffic. [9], [10], [11]

Past Utopian Visions of the Future

William Gaynor, mayor of New York in 1910, publicly considered carving a superwide avenue by cutting down a path of buildings in the middle of each block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Consider the palpable pro-car tone of this description of Park Avenue, written in the New York Times in December, 1918:

"one now sees, looking northward from Forty-fifth Street, a well-paved avenue adorned in the centre with attractive parking spaces dividing the roadway into the well-defined lines for north and south traffic." [12]

Despite the prevailing car-mania, there were, of course, dissenters. In 1926, Frederick Wright, Secretary of the Surface Line Operator's Traffic Committee, wrote a prophetic letter to the editor of the New York Times.

"New York's traffic issue is by no means a hopeless one, and the only reason why it is no nearer a solution is thatâ€¦no one has wanted to shoulder the responsibility of suggesting that restrictions be imposed on the private automobile, which is the primary cause of traffic congestion....

[The traffic problem] will not be solved by demolishing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of masonry from one end of Manhattan Island to the other in order to construct new thoroughfares.

It will not be solved by chopping down trees and encroaching on our open spaces in order to lay new miles of asphalt....

Does the public favor the expenditure of large sums of city funds to provide roadway accommodations for a few thousand additional private car riders, or does it believe that its interest will be better served by utilizing, at no cost whatsoever, 100 per cent of our existing streets for all forms of moving traffic?" [13]

ALSO ON THE LIVABLE STREETS NETWORK

REFERENCES

[1] Garth Johnson. "A Brief History of Park Avenue South." Gothamist. December 11, 2005.

[2] Mike Wallace and Edwin G. Burrows. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Oxford: Oxford University Press. October, 2000.

[3] Joseph Brennan. "The Underground Railway, New York City."

[4] Carter B. Horsley. "Grand Central Terminal."

[5] "Grand Central's Other Explosion." The Bowery Boys. July 18, 2007.

[6] "The Park Avenue Improvement in New York City." Scientific American. April 28, 1894.

[6a] Conversation with former NYC DOT Deputy Commissioner "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz who dug up the plans for the old Park Avenue.

[7] "To Widen Roadway for Park Ave. Traffic." New York Times. Editorial. May 14, 1922.

[8] Clay McShane. Down the Asphalt Path: The Automobile and the American City. New York: Columbia University Press. 1994.

[9] Aaron Naparstek. "The History of New York City Public Space." December 9, 2005.

[10] "What Our Cities Could Be." No Impact Man. August 22, 2007.

[11] Lloyd Alter. "Park Avenue Before and After." Treehugger. August 22, 2007.

[12] "Remarkable Rise of Park Avenue." New York Times. Editorial. December 1, 1918.

[13] "Restrictions on Autos." New York Times. Letter to the Editor. April 26, 1926.