Re: (rshsdepot) In re of NY & Harlem to Park Row . . .

["UDRRHS-President" <stevdel_@_prodigy.net>]

Thank you, Paul, for the wonderful tour of terminals and related facilities
in the amazing couple of blocks around Park Row/City Hall Park.
Just a few additions & comments:

> The Third Avenue Railroad became the Third Avenue Railway in 1908. If =
> the tall building in the background is the Municipal Building, that was =
> completed 1908.
Yes, it is the Municipal Building.

>
>
>
> In the distance on the left is A.J.Stewarts, the first department store, =
> though by this time it had already moved uptown at least twice. It is =
> now being renovated.=20

The A. T. Stewart Building at 280 Broadway has lots of railroad
connections -- old AT himself, besides creating the first department store
here, founded Garden City (cf, Stewart Ave Station on the LIRR) and promoted
a LIRR predecessor (forget which one) to feed it.  Later on, in the 1880's,
the redoubtable family of Thomas Cornell and son-in-law Samuel Coykendall,
variously promoters, builders, and operators of Ulster & Delaware RR,
Wallkill Valley Railroad, Rhinebeck & Connecticut Railroad, Rosendale
Consolidated Cement Co, and Cornell Steamboat Co, had their New York City
offices here, including corporate office of the Wallkill Valley when they
sold it out to the West Shore in a great 1880's coup.  In the 1930's,
Railroad Magazine (!) was published here; today its only railroad
connections are a piece of rail welded into some kind of brace along the
sidewalk on the north (Reade St) side of the building, who-knows-why, and
the fact that my office is across the street in 277 Broadway, itself an
1890's landmark that was Cass Gilbert's first big building, where he proved
he could build these new-fangled skyscrapers, and set out on the course that
eventually got him the Woolworth Building.

Steve Delibert

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