1906

Manhattan: Park Avenue - 32nd Street

Park Avenue, north from 32nd Street and Fourth Avenue, a point just north of the old Sunfish Pond. The Street car tunnel is the old tunnel under Murray Hill cut by the New York and Harlem Railway in its early days. An engine house with a turntable stood where the Armory is now located, and there was a roundhouse or engine house in the block where the Park Avenue Hotel is shown. The name Park Avenue was first applied to that portion of Fourth Avenue between 34th and 42nd Streets, and is so shown on maps, with the little green parks in the middle of the avenue in each block, as early as 1867. Above 42nd Street the name Park Avenue was not applied till nearly 1890. After the building of the first Grand Central Station in 1870, train service down to Madison Square was discontinued, and the tunnel taken over by the horse-cars. In 1898 this surface line was electrified. In 1935, when the Madison and Fourth Avenue street cars have been superseded by buses, the tunnel will be remodeled for automobile traffic. On the east side from 32nd to 33rd Streets stand the barbarns of the Metropolitan Street Railway; they will be torn down in 1925. The 71st Regiment Armory, shown in the next block, was erected in 1893. On the west side of the avenue, the Park Avenue Hotel, built by A. T. Stewart in the 1870's, will give place in 1926 to the new No. 2 Park Avenue building. On either side of 33rd Street may be seen subway entrances; the subway has been open about two years. The 333rd to 34th Street block, west, will be demolished in 1910 to make room for the Vanderbilt Hotel. On the horizon may be seen the new Hotel Belmont on the southwest corner of 42nd Street, and one dome of the old Grand Central Station. Compare this picture with Galloway's view of the west side of the avenue, looking north from this point, in 1930. Brown Brothers, Photographers.

Photo from the New York Public Library - Milstein Collection