80. LOOKING NORTH BETWEEN 50TH AND 51ST STREETS, c. 1923

81. LOOKING SOUTH AFTER 1928

## 78-81. Park Avenue

As a part of the redevelopment of Grand Central Station, the open rail yards which bisected Manhattan were covered between 42nd and 96th Streets (Figure 78). In their place, on an immense steel bridge, present-day Park Avenue came into being (Figure 79). The transition was dramatic. Soot, noise, and blight gave way. The depreciated East Side became a contender for new building and major investment. Park Avenue, by the 1920's, was laid out with a pleasant, meandering pedestrian mall with seating niches down its center (Figure 80). The road right-of-way was restricted to minimal space serving the luxurious new residential buildings. The park malls were destroyed in 1928 when they were squeezed down into traffic islands. The automobile took over. Park Avenue, appropriately named at the outset, became an urban speedway. The brief history of Park Avenue is a vivid illustration of how a multi-level urban transit corridor redevelopment can be gracefully and humanistically completed, only to be subsequently perverted by a misguided emphasis on the automobile.