Submitted by jason gettinger, Sep 8, 2008 15:55

In the story about a sculpture on the Park Avenue Median @ 70th Street, Ms. Taylor states that the Number 6 train runs underneath. Oh no. Another error about NY City. As every native knows, the railroad runs under Park Avenue from 97th Street to Grand Central Terminal. On the UES, the six train runs under Lexington Avenue (hence, Lexington Avenue Line). The six train angles over to Park Avenue south of the railroad tracks. The Lexington Line station at Grand Central is actually angled between Lex and Park. Once the great New York Central Railroad ran from Grand Central, up Park Avenue, across the Harlem River to the mainland and on to the Hudson Valley, the Mohawk Valley, west to Buffalo, then on to Toronto, or the cities of the midwest on the Great Lakes. From underneath Vanderbilt Avenue near the old Biltmore Hotel, the 20th Century Limited and other varnish runs made it to Chicago in 16 hours. Now, only the Metro North Commuter Railroad runs under the median, which covered the tracks when electric engines came into use around 1913. Thus began the building boom on Park. Commodore Vanderbilt's railroad called itself the Water Level Route. The highest point above sea level between Grand Central and Chicago was opposite the George F. Baker mansion at Park and 93d. As for the subway, it originally went up Lafayette Street to Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South and Park Avenue) to 42d street, curved left, went to Times Square, curved right and went up Broadway. Part of the Grand Central to Times Square segment is now the Shuttle, because the line on the East Side was extended over to and up Lexington Avenue early in the 20th Century, while the West Side portion was extended south from Times Square along 7th Avenue, which was cut through below 14th Street, Varick Street, West Broadway and over to Brooklyn or down to South Ferry.

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