Thirteenth Avenue (Manhattan)

Coordinates: 40°44′24″N 74°00′41″W / 40.74°N 74.01140°W / 40.74; -74.01140

13th Avenue as seen from the north in 2008, with World Financial Center in background
1860 map
Gansevoort Peninsula has been cleared, 2018

Thirteenth Avenue is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, United States, built on landfill in 1837 along the Hudson River, though none of it remains.[1] On an 1891 map published by G. W. Bromley, it is shown heading north from 11th Street to around 29th Street, where it became 12th Avenue.

In the early 20th century, New York wanted to build longer piers along the Hudson to accommodate bigger ships such as the RMS Lusitania and the RMS Titanic. However, the United States government, which controls the bulkhead line, refused to allow longer piers to be built. The shipping companies were reluctant to build longer piers further uptown because existing infrastructure such as the tracks of the New York Central Railroad and the 23rd Street ferry station were already in place downtown. To solve this problem, the city took the unusual step of removing the section of landfill on which Thirteenth Avenue ran south of 22nd Street so the Chelsea Piers could be constructed to handle the liners.

A small section of the landfill north of Gansevoort Street, the West Washington Market, was left as an exception, becoming what was known as the "Gansevoort Peninsula", the location of a facility of the New York City Department of Sanitation, across West Street from Gansevoort Street. The small space between Gansevoort Street and Bloomfield Street, and the approximate place where Thirteenth Avenue once ran, was used as a parking lot for garbage trucks and employees' vehicles. An adjacent stretch of cobblestone is all that remains of the original Thirteenth Avenue, which has apparently been de-mapped by the city. It does not appear on the official Geographic Information System map,[2] but does appear on Google Maps. Proposals have been made for a sandy beach, or for a garbage transfer pier.[3]

In 2016, the city began demolishing the Department of Sanitation building as part of a plan for the Hudson River Park Trust to create a new public park on the land. [4]

References

  1. ↑ "History of Thirteenth Avenue"
  2. ↑ "2 Bloomfield Street" (address of the Sanitation Department depot) on the New York City Geographic Information System map. Accessed: 30 November 2015
  3. ↑ Amateau, Albert (January 5, 2005). "Gansevoort Recycling Plan Comes Around Again". The Villager. Retrieved February 5, 2011.
  4. ↑ Tcholakian, Danielle (February 19, 2016). "Salt Shed Demolition Clears Way for Public Use of Hudson River Park Pier". DNA Info. Archived from the original on November 8, 2017. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.