New York and Harlem RR 42nd Street Station

Classic Trains General Discussion
1

I’m quite fascinated by the 30th Street Station of the Hudson River RR, and happy that so many photographs exist. I was unaware that the woodcut with Lincoln’s funeral train was in color.

My question is: In view of the fact that the first Grand Central Station was built in 1870–and photography was around in those days–are there any photographs of the 42nd Street Station of the Harlem that preceded Grand Central Station? There is a woodcut of that, too. And the building resembles, slightly, the architecture of the 30th Street Station.

2

Before Grand Central Station, which proceeded the 1910 Grand Central Terminal, the terminal was not at 42nd Street but at 29th-30th Street, directly across town from the Hudson River Railroad’s terminal. It wsas called Union Terminal because it was operated for both the New York and Harlem and the New Haven. Until around 1870, it was the southernmost point of steam operation, and some coaches were then hauled down to City Hall - Park Row, occasionally even freight cars, by horses. So 42nd St was just a normal stop, probably much like a streetcar or interurban stop, since the railroad was in the middle of Park - 4th Avenue, until the GCS was built. Even then, the New Haven insisted on running some trains, with horses, south of GCS to the old Union Station, and pictures of the 1870 station on 42nd Street show the connecting tracks. I am unsure when the New Haven ceased this procedure and the Union Station property was sold. The Union Station was on the east side of 4th Avenue (now Park Avenue South, possibly)…

3

Bill Middleton, in his book on Grand Central Terminal, quotes a passenger describing the switch from horses to locomotives at 42nd Street–sometime in the 1860s. It appears to have been an amazing procedure–performed many times a day. There was a yard at that location. It serviced both locomotives and horses, in addition to other things.

Middleton shows two woodcuts of 42nd Street and Fourth Avenue, one of which is from the Museum of the City of New York collection, the other from the New York Public Library print resources.

The Harlem Terminal, which was a union station and later became the first Madison Square Garden, was located on the block bounded by Fourth and Madison avenues, and 25th and 26th streets (photographs show Wagner sleeping-car storage as far north as 30th Street). After Grand Central Depot was built, and the New Haven stopped using the union station, the trainshed of the Harlem Terminal was roofed over, and converted into MSG. The second MSG was built on the site a generation later, and today it is the location of New York Life headquarters.

Hopefully, somebody photographed the 42nd Street location prior to Grand Central Depot. Before half-tone printing was introduced in the 1890s (I believe by S. S. McClure), artists created many of the published woodcuts from actual photographs.

4

Excerpt from The Traveler’s Guide to the Hudson River, Saratoga Springs, Lake George, Falls of Niagara and Thousand Islands;… by John Disturnell (1864)

NEW YORK AND HARLEM RAILROAD ROUTE.

Depot, Corner 4th Avenue and 26th Street, New York.

This Railroad extends from the station in Centre Street, and runs through Broome Street, the Bowery, and Fourth Avenue to the outer depot, corner Twenty-sixth Street; at Thirty-second Street it enters the deep cutting into the solid rock, at Murray Hill, which is covered over to Forty-first Street, and then proceeds to Yorkville, 6 miles, where is a tunnel under Prospect Hill, which is about 601 feet long, 24 feet wide, and 21 high, cut through solid rock; from thence it runs through Harlem, 7 miles, crossing Harlem River over a substantial bridge, entering the county of Westchester at Mott Haven, where is a thriving settlement, and several extensive manufacturing establishments.

Morrisania, ten miles, is a continuous settlement, which may justly be considered as the suburbs of New York. Here is a population of about 5,000, most of whom are connected with business in the city.

Fordham, 12 miles, is another village pleasantly situated on the line of the railroad. Here is located St. John’s College, a Roman Catholic institution, standing on a slight eminence called Rose Hill. Thus far there is almost a continuous settlement on both sides of the railroad, affording many delightful sites for suburban residences.

Williams’ Bridge, 14 miles from New York, lying on the west bank of a small stream called Bronx River, is the station from whence diverges the New York and New Haven Railroad, extending eastwardly 76 miles to New Haven, Conn. This road forms in part the great railroad route from New York to Hartford, Springfield, Boston, etc.

White Plains, 26 miles from the city, is a handsome vi

5

I believe at some point the depot was moved from E. 26th to E.29th. When, I am not sure. Then to 42nd Street and Grand Central Station or Depot.

6

1870 NY Times

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A0CEFD61E3CE13BBC4F51DFB366838B669FDE&oref=slogin

7

Thank you for the great print looking north from 30th Street toward the Murray Hill Tunnel. The print, which appeared in “Ballou’s Pictorial” in the mid-1850s, predated the Harlem Depot by more than five years.

According to Robert A. M. Stern, and others, the Harlem Depot was built in 1863, eight years before Grand Central Depot. I assume that by the 1860s, the conversion point from horses to steam would have been moved up to 42nd Street for a few years.

But photographs also indicate that as late as 1878, Wagner Drawing Room Cars are shown stored on Fourth Avenue and 33rd Street (flanking the entrance to the Murray Hill Tunnel) in front of A. T. Stewart’s Hotel for Women.

There was an amazing amount of activity along Fourth Avenue during the last half of the nineteenth century.

8

As I mentioned, New Haven cars continued south to 29th-30th Street, pulled by horses, after Grand Central Station was opened. There is no reason why some New York and and Harlem cars could not have also been moved. Possibly the picture relates to a special movement, where a charter wanted the sleeper cars to move directliy adjacent to the destination hotel. Indeed, some freight service, with two or four horses pulling individual freight cars, continued south to Park Row-City Hall, for some time, possibliy up to the time that the Fourth Avenue streetcar line, also New YOrk and Haarlem and so lettered on the streetcars into the New York Railways GM-Management and Ownership era, was electrified with the conduit power collection system, around 1899. At the time the streetcars were leased to the Metropolitan Street Railway, with reversion to New YOrk and Harlem independent operation when that system went bankrupt… GM started effectively running the streetcar line as part of the New York Railways Green Lines system around 1926, then bought it “from the Vanderbilt Interests” in 1834, with conversion to buses in 1935, but the last line, the 86th St. Crosstown, in 1936. Since the railroad used the tracks north of Grand Central, the New YOrk and Harlem built a parallel streetcar line north of 42md Street on Madison Avenue, with its northern Terminous at the 138th Street “The Bronx” New York and Harlem station. (This station was closed and removed after WWII.) Streetcar branches were built on 86th Street and 116th Street.