What is the history of park ave Wasn't it a park and if so when was it converted to a road?

Answer 1

When you currently drive down Park Avenue from Grand Central Terminal you will notice in the middle, a median consisting of little grass parks surrounded in some cases by iron fences, and some with iron circular, grated, or rectangular covers over them all the way up to 97th st. These little parks are the result of the original Park Avenue which was was originally named "Fourth Avenue", and starting in the 1830's carried the tracks of the New York and Harlem railroad at street level with "Fourth Ave/Park Ave" on either side of it. There was already a railroad tunnel built thru Murray Hill between 34th and 40th streets in the early 1850's as a result of when the previous cut there was covered over with grates and grass. Thus, the first of the little grass parks you see today were formed when the original cut there was covered. And as a result in 1860, this section of Fourth Avenue was renamed "Park Avenue" all the way to 42nd street. Today as in the 1850's - 70's, down beneath were first the tracks of the "new York and Harlem Railroad, then the New York Central, and now the Metro North and they run all the way to and across the Harlem River. You see will see as you drive along present day Park Avenue, the grass medians with their covers and grates that begin just after Grand Central, with the present Metro North railroad running beneath them, you will now know that at one time 1830-1875, steam locomotives ran at first at the surface , and then down below in a cut, and then beneath this covered cut which became a tunnel with little grass parks built and planted over the tops of what was first a open beam tunnel and then a covered tunnel with circular and rectangular vents to exhaust the steam from the locomotives out f what you now see covered with steel doors and grates in these little parks. Liek I said, when the original Grand Central Depot was built and opened in 1871, theoriginal surface railroad tracks between 56th st and 96th street were sunk into a "cut", i.e. the railroad tracks were re-layed into the newly dug trench/cut which was lower than the streets of Fourth Ave/Park Avenue which ran on either side of this newly dug railroad cut. However, then as it is today, when you get to 97th street, the tracks emerge from the tunnel below and up on to a stone viaduct that was built in 1871 and is still in use today by Metro North. When this stone viaduct ends at 116th st, it becomes a steel viaduct all the way to the Harlem river bridge. The reason the bridge changes from stone to steel is that before the new Harlem River Bridge was built in the late 1870's, there was also a cut, just as I previously described. But, a new bridge across the river required the tracks to be raised to reach the bridges new height. As a result, first the cut was covered with the previously mentioned stone viaduct starting at 116th street, and then when an even newer and higher bridge was planned in the late 1870's, that portion of the stone viaduct built over the old cut had the steel viaduct built over its chopped down remains. When steam locomotives were banned around 1900 in New York City (Manhattan), the old Grand Central Depot along with its Steam Engines, Water Towers, Round Houses, and coaling towers, and vast train yard were all torn down, and replaced with the current Grand Central Terminal, and electric tracks for Electric powered trains all built in 2 levels in a vast deep hole and canyon that was covered up with the streets of park avenue just outside of present day grand Central Terminal. HERE ARE SOME GREAT LINKS! http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beach/chapter13.html http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/nycrr01.Html