Vanderbilt Avenue

Vanderbilt Avenue is the name of three streets in New York City, all of which were named after Cornelius Vanderbilt, the builder of Grand Central Terminal.

Brooklyn's Vanderblit Avenue in 1974.

Brooklyn

Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn carries traffic north and south between Grand Army Plaza (40°40′30″N 73°58′11″W / 40.67500°N 73.96972°W) and Flushing Avenue at the Vanderbilt Avenue gate of the Brooklyn Navy Yard (40°41′52″N 73°58′14.5″W / 40.69778°N 73.970694°W).

This avenue serves the neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. Landmarks include the old Public School 9 and Public School 9 Annex buildings at the corner of Sterling Place, and Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School at Greene Avenue.

The B69 bus, which replaced a streetcar line in 1950, runs on this avenue. There were also two now-demolished subway stations on the BMT Myrtle Avenue Line and BMT Fulton Street Line built here.

Manhattan

Vanderbilt Avenue in Manhattan runs from 42nd Street to 47th Street between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue. It was built in the late 1860s as the result of construction of Grand Central Depot.^[1] The southbound Grand Central Terminal Park Avenue Viaduct runs above the street's eastern side. The Yale Club of New York City is located on Vanderbilt Avenue, at the intersection of East 44th Street, as is the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and the proposed One Vanderbilt supertall skyscraper.

Staten Island

Vanderbilt Avenue runs northeast-southwest through East Shore. It is approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) long and serves the neighborhoods of Clifton, Stapleton Heights, Concord, and Grymes Hill. The northeast end is on Bay Street (40°37′20″N 74°4′23″W / 40.62222°N 74.07306°W), west of Clifton of the Staten Island Railway and east of Bayley Seton Hospital.

Along with parts of Richmond Road and all of Amboy Road, Vanderbilt Avenue forms the first leg of Staten Island's colonial-era eastern corridor that predates the newer, straighter, and wider Hylan Boulevard. The three roads that make up the corridor share a common numbering system, i.e. Richmond Road's numbers start where Vanderbilt Avenue's leave off, (40°36′48″N 74°5′13.4″W / 40.61333°N 74.087056°W) and Amboy Road's numbers start where Amboy Road forks away from Richmond Road. This numbering system includes the numerically highest of street addresses in New York City.^[2] Other roads that fork off of this corridor are: St. Paul's Avenue, Van Duzer Street, Targee Street, Rockland Avenue, Bloomingdale Road, and Richmond Valley Road. This street is served by the S76 and S86 bus routes.

References

1. Gray, Christopher. "Streetscapes/Grand Central Terminal; How a Rail Complex Chugged Into the 20th Century", The New York Times, June 21, 1998. Accessed October 27, 2007. "According to Carl Condit's 1980 book, The Port of New York, in 1860s Cornelius Vanderbilt sold his shipping interests to get control of the New York & Harlem, the New York Central, and the Hudson River Railroads.... From 1869 to 1871 the first Grand Central Station was built, 249 feet wide on 42d Street, 698 feet long on newly created Vanderbilt Avenue."
2. "End of the Line". Forgotten New York. Archived from the original on October 17, 2010. Retrieved February 7, 2015.

Route map: Bing / Google