59th Street Station - Park Ave. Tunnel

According to diagrams of the upper and lower levels of GCT; There was an unused station at 59th Street. Does anyone know about this station, and if it still exists. I know this is not to be confused with the IRT or BMT 59th Street stations.

Its not a station but a two car emergency platform , to evacuate trains in case of fire etc etc.
Other emergency platforms exist at 72th street - 86 th street and just outside the tunnel near CP3(nick )interlocking.
The platforms are very small and have loads of electrical gear on them, the exit is a pop up hatch on park Avenue.

Thank you. It did seem like an odd location for a station.

Then, of course, there's the Waldorf "siding" around 50th St., but that's a whole other topic.

Let's not go THERE ...again....again....again....again.....

DutchRailnut wrote:Its not a station but a two car emergency platform , to evacuate trains in case of fire etc etc.
Other emergency platforms exist at 79th street and just outside the tunnel near CP3(nick )interlocking.
The platforms are very small and have loads of electrical gear on them, the exit is a pop up hatch on park Avenue.

I was under the impression that these were indeed passenger stations at one point... 59th Street, 79th Street and maybe one other at 110th Street, dating back to the original New York & Harlem. Once the IRT subway opened in 1904, there wasn't much need for this "local" service and the stations were closed. I'll have to do some more research to come up with more definite answers...

IIRC, the old local stations were at 59th, 72nd, and 86th Streets.

shlustig wrote:IIRC, the old local stations were at 59th, 72nd, and 86th Streets.

YES THAT''S RIGHT, and all 3 are visible. 59th St. is the most visible. 86th St can fool you because the platforms were between tracks 3-4 and 1-2.

I have been told those stations were in service until the IRT subway opened but I can't comment beyond that.

They may have been passenger stations when park avenue was open cut, they were never passenger stations after the tunnel was closed in.

I am only guessing on this one but I think they were passenger stations until the terminal was built and opened. I have at least a couple of very old timetables that might show
something but they are at home and I will be in Connecticut for at least another week so I can't shed any more light on this before I get back in Florida if then.
Noel Weaver

http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/86st.html

The railroad tunnel under Park Ave was built by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad in 1872-1876. It replaced a railroad mainly at street level that was opened by the New-York and Harlaem Rail-Road (sic) up to Harlem station at 125 St in 1837... The three stations in the tunnel are short, for local trains of not more than four short cars. They had high platforms at car floor height, which was not common at the time, not even at the Grand Central Depot. The 150 foot long platforms at 59 St and 72 St are located on the outer sides of the tunnel, and the ticket office, waiting rooms, and toilets were at platform level. An eight-foot wide iron stairway, divided into up and down sides, led up to an eight by twelve foot wooden house on the sidewalk... The opening of the Third Ave El a block away in 1878 must have hurt ridership from 86 St to Grand Central, but the station was kept open. A surviving employee timetable from 1895 still shows many local trains stopping at 86 St. Within a few years more, however, the station was closed, and probably did not survive to see the electric trains inaugurated in 1906.

This site has information for your question.

I remember passing by the 59th Street station at a slow speed and noticing that some of the old architectural details remained. Here is an engraving of 1876 showing a possible configuration of the station at street level. The next stops uptown were 72th and 86th Streets. I am assuming that all three stations were located on major cross town streets and readily accessible to the omnibuses. The stations were eclipsed with the introduction of the IRT, which oddly enough kept some of the same cross street locations. I believe that I have seen an earlier depiction of the one of the stations which had simple wood platforms located in the original cut. I cant imaging what the smoke would have been like in the station around the late 19th Century, but it was probably no worse that the smell of the horse droppings on the street above. In 1876 Park Avenue was known as Fourth Avenue.

I am assuming that all three stations were located on major cross town streets and readily accessible to the omnibuses.

Of course there is no transverse road through Central Park at 72nd St. I don't know if that was the case when the 72nd St. station, (if it existed,) was built. That may have been open country.

Philipmartin--
Physically (I don't know about traffic regulations) there is a transverse road across Central Park at 72nd Street. The crosstown busses on East 72nd don't go across, but I think they may have some decades ago: I have a faint recollection (from the 1950s) that the #6 bus ran along East 72nd, then went through the park ... somewhere.
Anyway, 72nd is a major crosstown street on the East side.

I first found out bout these stations by looking at the rich e greene (sp?) track maps. There were 3 or 4 stations, one or more were on the viaduct, at least one was in the open cut. That photo is nuts by the way, leads me back to info on the streetcar lines with tracks buried under most manhattan streets/aves.

- A