Lexington Avenue (Manhattan)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lexington Avenue is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along its 5.5 mile (8.9 km), 110-block route, Lexington Avenue runs through Harlem, Carnegie Hill, the Upper East Side, Midtown, and Murray Hill to a point of origin that is centered on Gramercy Park. South of Gramercy Park, the axis continues as Irving Place to East 14th Street.
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[edit] History
Lexington Avenue was not one of the streets included in the 1811 street grid, and thus does not also have a numerical designation, and the addresses for cross streets do not start at an even Hundred number. The portion of Lexington Avenue below 42nd Street dates from 1832, when Samuel Ruggles, a lawyer and real estate developer, established Gramercy Park, and established the street to provide north-south access. The portion north of 42nd Street dates from the building of the Lexington Avenue Subway, and opened to traffic when that line did in 1917. This was not coincidental. The street was established to both service and be serviced by the Subway.
- Sources: The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins; and MTA New York City Transit.
Parallel to Lexington Avenue lie Park Avenue to its west and Third Avenue to its east. New Yorkers often abbreviate Lexington Avenue as "Lex." The avenue is largely commercial at ground level, with offices above. There are clusters of hotels on Lexington Avenue in the "30s" and "40s" (from Lexington's intersection with 30th Street through to its intersection with 49th Street, roughly) and apartment buildings farther north.
Lexington Avenue is named for the 1775 Battle of Lexington, the first battle of the American Revolutionary War.
[edit] Public transportation
Above ground
General cab service is available for hailing. The following buses use Lexington Avenue (northbound buses run along 3rd Avenue):
- M98 Limited: To East 34th Street
- M101 Limited: To East 6th Street
- M102: To East 6th Street
- M103: To City Hall
Underground
The IRT Lexington Avenue Line of the New York City Subway runs under Lexington Avenue north of 42nd Street (at Grand Central Terminal); south of Grand Central this subway line runs under Park Avenue until 14th Street.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
| Major Avenues of Manhattan | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| To the west Park Avenue | Lexington Avenue | To the east Third Avenue | ||
| WSH (12) | Riverside | 11 (West End) | 10 (Amsterdam) | Dyer | 9 | 8 or CPW | 7 | 6 or Lenox | 5 | Madison | Park (4) | Lexington | 3 | 2 | 1 | A or York | B or East End | C | D | FDR | ||||
zh:Template:紐約市市區主要大道de:Lexington Avenue (Manhattan) fr:Lexington Avenue sv:Lexington Avenue
