Avenue of the Americas in New York City

Tuesday, 15 November 2022 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General
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Historic Ladies' Mile shopping district © Beyond My Ken/cc-by-sa-4.0

Historic Ladies’ Mile shopping district © Beyond My Ken/cc-by-sa-4.0

Sixth Avenue – also known as Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City‘s borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or “uptown”. It is commercial for much of its length. Sixth Avenue begins four blocks below Canal Street, at Franklin Street in TriBeCa, where the northbound Church Street divides into Sixth Avenue to the left and the local continuation of Church Street to the right, which then ends at Canal Street. From this beginning, Sixth Avenue traverses SoHo and Greenwich Village, roughly divides Chelsea from the Flatiron District and NoMad, passes through the Garment District and skirts the edge of the Theater District while passing through Midtown Manhattan. Sixth Avenue’s northern end is at Central Park South, adjacent to the Artists’ Gate entrance to Central Park via Center Drive. Historically, Sixth Avenue was also the name of the road that continued north of Central Park, but that segment was renamed Lenox Avenue in 1887 and co-named Malcolm X Boulevard in 1987.

The avenue’s official name was changed to Avenue of the Americas in 1945 by the City Council, at the behest of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who signed the bill into law on October 2, 1945. The intent was to honor “Pan-American ideals and principles” and the nations of Central and South America, and to encourage those countries to build consulates along the avenue. It was felt at the time that the name would provide greater grandeur to a shabby street, and to promote trade with the Western Hemisphere. After the name change, round signs were attached to streetlights on the avenue, showing the national seals of the nations honored. However, New Yorkers rarely used the avenue’s newer name, and in 1955, an informal study found that locals used “Sixth Avenue” more than eight times as often as “Avenue of the Americas”. The move was also criticized as “propaganda” by those who wanted to return to the original name. The street has been labelled as both “Avenue of the Americas” and “Sixth Avenue” in recent years. Most of the old round signs with country emblems were gone by the late 1990s, and the ones remaining are showing signs of age.

© Tdorante10/cc-by-sa-4.0 © Tdorante10/cc-by-sa-4.0 Bank of America Tower © Tdorante10/cc-by-sa-4.0 © flickr.com - Sasha Kargaltsev/cc-by-2.0 Historic Ladies' Mile shopping district © Beyond My Ken/cc-by-sa-4.0 © Tdorante10/cc-by-sa-4.0
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Historic Ladies' Mile shopping district © Beyond My Ken/cc-by-sa-4.0
Sights along Sixth Avenue include Juan Pablo Duarte Square; with the polychrome High Victorian Gothic Jefferson Market Courthouse, currently occupied by the Jefferson Market Library; the surviving stretch of grand department stores of 1880 to 1900 in the Ladies’ Mile Historic District that runs from 18th Street to 23rd Street; the former wholesale flower district; Herald Square at 34th Street, site of Macy’s department store; Bryant Park from 40th to 42nd Streets; and the corporate stretch above 42nd Street, which includes the Bank of America Tower, W. R. Grace Building, International Center of Photography, Rockefeller Center — including the Time-Life Building, News Corp. Building, Exxon Building and McGraw-Hill Building, as well as Radio City Music Hall. The Steinway Hall of New York was moved to 1133 Sixth Avenue in 2016. Sixth Avenue is the site of the annual Village Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village and the Dominican Day Parade in Midtown.

Sixth Avenue is served by the New York City Subway with the IND Sixth Avenue Line (B, D, F <F>, and M trains) north of Houston Street, and the IND Eighth Avenue Line (A, C, and E trains) south of Greenwich Avenue. The Harlem portion of Sixth Avenue (Lenox Avenue) is served by the IRT Lenox Avenue Line (2 and 3 trains) north of Central Park North (110th Street). The PATH‘s Uptown Hudson Tubes to New Jersey also run under Sixth Avenue (JSQ–33, HOB-33, and JSQ-33 (via HOB) trains) from 9th to 33rd Streets.

Read more on Wikipedia Ladies’ Mile Historic District and Wikipedia Sixth Avenue (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.




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