Park Avenue (Manhattan)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the major avenue in New York City. For other uses, see Park Avenue (disambiguation).
Park Avenue (formerly Fourth Avenue) is a wide boulevard that carries traffic north and south in Manhattan in New York City. Throughout most of its duration, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east. The thoroughfare is noted for its perennially high real estate prices and affluent reputation, especially as it runs through the Upper East Side.
The flowers and greenery in the median of Park Avenue are maintained by the Fund for Park Avenue. Begonias are a flower of choice for the Funds gardeners because there is no automatic watering system and they can cope with hot sun.<ref>Why Yellow Takes the Wheel, The New York Times, July 16, 2006</ref>
The road that becomes Park Avenue originates as the Bowery. From 8th Street to 14th Street, it is known as Fourth Avenue. Above 14th Street, it becomes a north-south thoroughfare. From 14th Street to 17th Street, it forms the eastern boundary of Union Square and is known as Union Square East; its southbound lanes merge with Broadway for this distance. From 17th Street to 32nd Street, it is known as Park Avenue South, and, for the remainder of its distance, it is known as Park Avenue.
Between 33rd Street and 40th Street, its two center lanes, one in each direction, descend into the Murray Hill Tunnel. Immediately across from 40th Street, these center lanes rise onto an elevated structure that goes over and around Grand Central Terminal, carrying each direction on opposite sides of the building, which takes up the space formerly occupied by Park Avenue from 42nd Street to 45th Street. The bridge, one of two structures in Manhattan known as the Park Avenue Viaduct, returns to ground level at 46th Street after going through the Helmsley Building (also referred to as the New York Central Building or by its address, 230 Park Avenue).
As Park Avenue enters Midtown north of Grand Central, it is distinguished by many glass-box skyscrapers that serve as headquarters for corporations such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and MetLife.
From Grand Central to 97th Street, Metro-North Railroad tracks (formerly of the New York Central Railroad) run in a tunnel underneath Park Avenue (the Park Avenue Tunnel). At 97th, the tracks come above ground, rising onto the other Manhattan structure known as the Park Avenue Viaduct. The first street to pass under the viaduct is 102nd Street; from there to the Harlem River the railroad viaduct runs down the middle of Park Avenue.
Park Avenue ends north of 132nd Street, with connections to the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive. The name is continued on the other side of the river in the Bronx by the street just east of the railroad; see Park Avenue (Bronx).
The following institutions are headquartered on Park Avenue:
[edit] History
Park Avenue was originally known as Fourth Avenue and carried the tracks of the New York and Harlem Railroad starting in the 1830s. The railroad originally built 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 renamed Park Avenue in 1860. In 1867, the name applied all the way to 42nd Street. When Grand Central Depot was opened in the 1870s, the railroad tracks between 56th and 96th Streets were sunk out of sight, and, in 1888, Park Avenue was extended to the Harlem River.
In 1936, an elevated structure was built around Grand Central Terminal to allow automobile traffic to pass the station unimpeded. In October 1937, a part of the Murray Hill Tunnel was reopened for road traffic.
In 1959, the City Council changed the name of Fourth Avenue between 17th and 32nd Streets to Park Avenue South. In 1963, the Pan Am Building was built straddling Park Avenue atop Grand Central Terminal, with a tunnel through it to accommodate the automobile bridge.
| Major Avenues of Manhattan | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| To the west Madison Avenue | Park Avenue | To the east Lexington 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 | ||||
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