Cars Are A Scourge on the Face of the Planet Dept: Park Avenue Before and After

Imagine if NYC and other major metropolitan areas in the U.S. went back to what that before picture looked like? I might actually enjoy going into urban areas again.

That's beautiful. Thanks for putting that up.

Yikes! You really shouldn't believe everything you read. Park Avenue was never a park. However, it did start off as a railyard which was paved over with a large platform that allowed for the buildings, hotels, churches, etc. to be built. The green space you see in the picture is a median on the avenue - one that still exists today. The medians are elevated, and clearly there wasn't any traffic going past when the picture was taken, but no, Park Avenue was never closed to traffic. The avenue was originally Fourth Avenue, and the name was changed for what we would now call marketing purposes.The medians used to be bigger, which was certainly nicer, but let's keep the facts straight here.

Christopher, I think you should have your eyes checked: the first picture is obviously not a "median", since it appears to hold the entire width of the Avenue.

Medians today are small affairs on Park Avenue: try a Google map if you don't believe me:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Park+Avenue+Manhattan+New+York&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=50.111473,82.265625&ie=UTF8&ll=40.782759,-73.95715&spn=0.005898,0.013561&t=h&z=17&om=1&layer=c&cbll=40.779783,-73.957631&cbp=2,0,0.5,0

Anyone can see that Park Avenue today is a very far cry from what it was...

that's a nice piece..living without a car is beautiful, but in reality, it's our necessity ever since..its not p0ssible to live without it since we are living from distant places..but honestly, i've been much facing troubles with my car for maintenance and its coSts..just last week i had my subaru ball joints changed...owning a car requires you to spend dollars on it.

That photo is obviously digitally manipulated. Look at the front of saint bart's in the photo, then on a current day photo. The front looks twice as wide in the one posted here. (And no, its never burned down)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:StBarts1Outside.JPG

Also, it doesn't look that great in #1. See all the smog around, and the smoke of some form in the upper left.

You could also do this comparison with any number of urban parking lots that used to be beuatiful buildings. (I know of a few in Toronto...sadly things are going not-quite-full-circle and many parking lots are reverting to really ugly condo buildings.)

BTW, Chirstopher: I don't think anyone believes Park Avenue was closed to traffic, or literally a park. Just more park-like. The point is not to eliminate all traffic--that would quite possibly have a deadening effect--but to reduce it to a more humane--and more interesting--balance.

The personal automobile, electric, hybrid, or whatever, will always be with us, and that's fine. The idea is to reduce dependence to a level that allows a good balance in our cities: plenty of vibrant hustle n bustle, but also less pollution, more greenspace (even if it's wide medians running down an avenue) more walking, more face-to-face contact, fewer accidents, fewer ugly parking lots, more nice density, the list goes on....

purple,

i have not owned a car since 1992 (although i have borrowed one on occasion for trips out of the area). i have over this time, used bus, subway and area transit, a bicycle, and my feet to get around living in oakland california, san francsico, boston, and new haven. and not only does this work, but it's good for me, my communities and the planet, and it's fun (well, the biking and walking are :).

none of my friend living in new york own a car.

you might be surprised at how easy it is to get along without a car.

lexy-loo

from wikipedia:
"Park Avenue was originally known as Fourth Avenue and carried the tracks of the New York and Harlem Railroad starting in the 1830s. The railroad originally built an open cut through Murray Hill, which was covered with grates and grass between 34th and 40th Street in the early 1850s. A section of this "park" was renamed Park Avenue in 1860. In 1867, the name applied all the way to 42nd Street. When Grand Central Depot was opened in the 1870s, the railroad tracks between 56th and 96th Streets were sunk out of sight, and, in 1888, Park Avenue was extended to the Harlem River."

I think Christopher wins on this one.

The average amount of manure produced by horses is twenty-five pounds per day, per horse. Multiply that by 200,000 horses in New York at the turn of the century, and you have 2,500 tons of excretion raining down from horse-butts every single day. And that doesn't include copious amounts of pee. Anyone who's ever been near Central Park South and smelled the gifts left by just the fifty or so tourist carriages knows that no one on Tree-Hugger pining for the "good old days" in New York would have lasted five minutes. When horses live in fields they are part of nature, but when they are brought into cities and used like cars, they are far more filthy.

Add to that the fact that the wealthy could afford to have their neighborhoods cleaned while the poor, say, on the Lower East Side, would have to navigate literal piles of filth, and I vote thumbs up on the whole car thing.

The car isn't perfect. Far from it. But it sure as hell was a revolutionary improvement over the technology of the day.

this argument is no good. we could put a picture of america before it was taken over by the colonizers and compare it to the polluted cities of now.

you can view many things in a good or bad light, depending on how pessimistic or optimistic you are.

Yeah by all means lets return to the past before cars. Cities were so much better covered in horse shit.

You fucking hippies you get all romantic about the past without stopping to think about the drawbacks. A city like New York covered in animal feces is actually a lot less healthy than one populated with cars. There is a reason why we live twice as long now as then.

Of course you're selective in what you dislike about modern times. Cars bad... but here you are on the Internet. Do you have any idea how much power the internet consumes? Have you ever been in a modern data center? They consume massive amounts of power.

Just this one website running on two or three dedicated servers consumes nearly as much power as the average suburban house. The irony...

And if it weren't for cars, how many would have seen Park Avenue? It's kind of a long trip from MI to NY on horseback.

lexy-loo: How much of your cities depend on the workers who have no choice but drive from outside of city limits (and away from public transit)? Probably a large majority.

I almost lived without using a car for a while (only drove to visit family or go outside the city) but realize that modern cities depend on it.

Without cars you can't have big cities, without big cities it becomes increasingly hard to find a place where you don't need a vehicle.

I think it's important to keep in mind that Park Avenue, in it's glorious heyday, was a locale for the wealthy. Certainly every other Avenue in New York did not look like this at the time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for less cars and more park-like streets. But there are a lot of class issues that should not be ignored. The reason Manhattan is now moving toward a reduction in car traffic and becoming a more green place is precisely because Manhattan is now such a repletely wealthy place. And the wealthy people want nicer environs to live in. But weather this represents a real social turn in New York against cars remains to be seen. And weather other parts of New York will get the same treatment is also in doubt.

It is also worth noting that, before the car, New York was overrun with horses. You could barely walk down most streets. Tens of thousands of tons of manure were deposited in the streets each day. And horses regularly died and were left to rot out in the open.

When the car came along, ironically enough, it was perceived as saving New York from the stench and chaos of horses. So the history itself of this shift has it's own complexities.

lexy-lou:

Unfortunately, many areas do not have accessible public transportation. Otherwise, your statement about the ease of getting along without a car would be much more valid. However, a lack of public transportation results in most people being forced to drive themselves. Some people believe that the automobile / oil industry was largely responsible for this, putting pressure on certain organizations to keep public transportation low-key so that more automobiles and/or fuel would be required, thus generating more revenue for said companies.

It's not easy carrying groceries home from the supermarket either on foot or by bike. :)

Noryungi:

Take a closer look at the picture, center left hand side, there is the front of an auto, follow that further and you can see yet another auto, the median was larger, but there was certainly a road on either side.

To the Anonymous poster who states is been manipulated, its known as perspective, it only looks longer, it is in fact the same length, the second phone is unable to be taken from the same position as the fist as thats now a roadway.
Not to mention the photo you posted is obviously covering the entire left hand side of the front facade with a large tree in the median.

As I have walked by there many times, I can tell you the first picture is accurate in this post.

And finally, the smog you see in the first picture. Its digital artifacts of a nearly 100 year old picture, there is smog, that time was ripe with coal factories and open burn pits, but no where near the emissions you see in the second picture.

michael, nothing is inevitable. if your area doesn't have services in close proximity to residential areas, it's because you and your fellow citizens wanted it that way. if you don't have public transportation, it's because you're not organizing to demand it.

i lived in los angeles for almost two years without a car, and i didn't starve to death. when i hear people insisting that it's impossible to survive without one, i (and the other 5.5 billion people who survive without one) really just feel embarassed for you.

Before the car there were these other transportation tools, the cart/carriage and the horse, often used together.

New York City employed many street sweepers, because without them the horse shit wouldn't average 1 inch in depth all the time in the road, but much more. Horse-drawn carts created lots of noise ... horse hooves on cobblestone, metal cart wheel rims on cobblestone, people yelling at horses to stay on track. People welcomed the automobile because it cut down on noise and horse crap.

Park Avenue may or may not have been very pristine ... I don't know. Maybe they had horse control on that street. But the average street smelled terrible, you couldn't walk without stepping in horse crap, and the constant din was quite bad. Cars ain't so bad after all.

Before the car there were these other transportation tools, the cart/carriage and the horse, often used together.

New York City employed many street sweepers, because without them the horse shit wouldn't average 1 inch in depth all the time in the road, but much more. Horse-drawn carts created lots of noise ... horse hooves on cobblestone, metal cart wheel rims on cobblestone, people yelling at horses to stay on track. People welcomed the automobile because it cut down on noise and horse crap.

Park Avenue may or may not have been very pristine ... I don't know. Maybe they had horse control on that street. But the average street smelled terrible, you couldn't walk without stepping in horse crap, and the constant din was quite bad. Cars ain't so bad after all.

Remember also that the automotive industry successfully conspired to eliminate the streetcar system nationwide.

Uhhh, it's funny how people with no knowledge try to discredit things. First off, the picture of the old Park Ave is not digitally manipulated. The "park" area you see is the median and no, it was not elevated. This area is only from the old Helmsley building going north to around 96th street.

What has happened is that with more and more traffic on the streets of NY, the Park Ave park or median or whatever you want to call it was altered. Currently, that is right now in 2007, there are 4 lanes of traffic on both sides of the Park Ave median, 3 for moving traffic and 1 for parking on each side. This means there are a total of 8 lanes for vehicle traffic.

The original picture of Park Ave only had 4 lanes of traffic total. Those other 4 lanes of traffic are what made up the widened median from the past.

Yes it's true. No it's not a lie. Please look it up in the archives at the NY Museum or even the public library.

I'm sure that half of these naysayers don't even live in NY city or have been here. If you do live here then please head over to Park Ave. so you can see for yourself. Do you really think this area became so popular with the ultra rich in the early days that they would allow that much traffic in the swankiest area.

While I totally agree that banning cars in certain parts of NYC and other urban areas would be a good thing, let's not get carried away.

Yeah -- maybe Park Avenue looked great... but the rest of NYC was a pit. With no reason to pave roads (horses don't need asphalt,) they were a muddy mess. Horses don't use toilets and the resulting smell was probably unbearable.

A few years ago, I remember reading an interview with an old women who remembered very vividly how cars "cleaned" up the roads & environment almost immediately.

Perspective from a Californian who no longer drives... :)

that is a nice picture too bad it does not look real...

James:
You lived in LA without a car, I am happy. Someplace that has public transportation. Contrary to your view on the world not everyone lives in a major city. I live in Lincoln Nebraska, the second largest city in Nebraska. Our buses run from 7am to around 6-7pm depending on the route you need. Also some routes only have a bus every 2 hours (like the one to my work). People have complained and yelled and screamed and nothing is happening. If you would like to come here and bring your holier than thou self and live for two years on a non 9-5 job then be my guest. But, saying you did it in a city with 24 hour public service is just being a elitiest snob.

Doug Breener and all others using the word median:
"American Heritage Dictionary
median strip
n. Eastern, Midwestern, & Southern U.S.
The dividing area, either paved or landscaped, between opposing lanes of traffic on some highways. Also called median; also called regionally boulevard, mall1, medial strip, meridian, neutral ground."
The grass on either side is usally called the cities "right of way".

It's been a sad evolution - let's just hope cities begin to move to street cars, parks and green areas.

www.popculturepundit.com

I think we're missing the point, civil design requires a rethink in structure and movement of people within cities. parks and public transport should top every metropolitan list.

I am currently living in NYC, Brooklyn actually, and I own a car. I spend maybe 2hours a week with it because it is too difficult to pick up groceries on the other side of town, as far as driving in the city, that's probably 90% visitors. No one in their right mind would want to drive through Manhattan...plus, if you want a park, there are other options...Central Park is more of a park than that first picture...and it's New York, what do you expect pastures of wheat fields?

Trees are a scourge to the earth...everything degrades over time...live in the moment. Drive fast and take chances.

Good to see that the majority of people making comments haven't forgotten how filthy horses were (there were good reasons the car exploded in popularity so quickly) and haven't been fooled by this hippie fantasy interpretation of history. However, I wholeheartedly agree with the underlying sentiment of the post. I live in SF and walk to and from work every day. My wife owns a car and I only ever drive it on weekends (usually just to get groceries). I would love to see city planners in the USA work to promote non-car modes of transport (public transport, walking, biking) and restrict the use of autos in dense urban areas. I'm both amused and frustrated when I see clueless morons clogging up my city's streets with their gigantic Chevy Suburbans. I understand that rural and suburban people need a car far more than I do, but when you come to my city, leave your monster truck at the city limits, get off your fat butt, and enjoy the city on foot. However inaccurate the post was, it's still a great ideal to hope for. But hippies, you don't need to twist history into a deluded fantasy to suit your personal preferences - it makes the rest of us sensible lefties look bad. Cheers.

If we had to get 40,000 people together every year and kill them at one time to keep using cars that would seem outrageous. That is around the number of people die in cars every year.

Additionally the car isolates people from their neighbors, causes pollution, and has taken the livability out of our cities.

Cars are so highly subsidized, add the private cost of ownership and we could have more liveable cities with public transit. Im not suggesting more bus systems, would be nice to see more trains, light rail and street cars.

We had that in this country before the auto industry illegally dismantled the public transit in many cities. The fine for the big three was one dollar.

Fourth ave was once one of the dirtiest streets in new york. it carried all the filth, waste, and supplies to and from the rich mansions on fifth. They renamed it "park" to rid it of this cesspool image it had created.

The two pictures above were taken around the same time. Yes that is the median taken from an awkward angle and with less traffic. You can see the streets on either side of the "park" and there is actually a Model A zooming by on the right side of the "before" picture

now, i'm no fan of cars, but i'm also not a fan of misinformation.

Cory,

In the pre-1922 configuration the "median" filled almost the entire street space from building wall to building wall. There was only one lane for motor vehicles and horse-drawn carriages on either side of the "park." This configuration existed for something like 20 years. I will try to dig up the exact time frame.

The "park" photo was taken at 50th St. looking north some time before 1922. The traffic-filled photo was taken somewhere around 46th Street looking south some time after 1922.

Similar, though less dramatic road widenings took place all over Manhattan in the early to mid-20th century. For example, over the course of 40 years, Fifth Avenue went from being a two-way street with broad sidewalk promenades to a five-lane highway running one-way through the heart of the city.

For me, these photos drive home the point that no matter how much New York City's traffic engineers have widened streets and handed over the public right-of-way for the movement and storage of automobiles, traffic congestion has only grown worse, the city has only become more immobilized, and, in many ways, quality of life has diminished.

Granted, we don't have tenement fires, cholera epidemics or child labor anymore. But New York City currently has some of the worst childhood asthma rates in the entire world thanks to the city's increasingly crushing motor vehicle congestion. It is in some ways a tribute to the transformation of New York City that the worst violence you are likely to experience on a Manhattan street today will come not at the point of some criminal's gun or knife but at the front grill of somebody's honking, spewing, careening SUV.

where i live ...
there are certian roads and streets where you have to walk ...
no vehicles allowed ...
it used be just normal roads before the ban ...

I hate to offend anyone, but I personally like the picture after the 1922 "improvements".

Please do not misunderstand me. I am an advocate and encourage spending a little more money to work around existing trees in developing areas (like the Raleigh/Chapel HIll/Durham area), than pulling them out and replanting them with "twigs" and an enormous black parking lot.

But, in metropolitian areas like New York City, those cars show an important growth.

@Myles

Your first statement is completely ridiculous. Yes, car use has it's casualties. Many times these are a result of misuse of the vehicle. But do you really think there weren't deaths directly caused by the filth piled in the streets from all of the horses that cluttered them before cars? That was something that came with the horses, not as a result of misuse. Think about it. In proportion, I bet there was more deaths from disease due to unsanitary conditions every year than there is now due to automobile accidents.

Think about it. In proportion, I bet there was more deaths from disease due to unsanitary conditions every year than there is now due to automobile accidents

Ridiculous

The choice isn't between automobiles and horses anymore, folks. That's not really the argument here.

All you have to do is visit any one of a number of European cities, places like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Freiburg, Berlin, Paris, London to see what our choice is today in the world's big cities:

We can use the public right of way primarily for the movement and storage of private autos.

Or we can allocate that space to pedestrians, cyclists, light rail, buses, bus rapid transit and other more efficient and environmentally sound means of transportation.

Fake photo! Shame on the misleading one who posted it.

However, I do agree with the sentiments. It is an outrage that cars are legal at all in Manhattan.

The first photo is authentic, I have it in a book of New York changing scenes that was published at least 30 years ago. Park Avenue actually did look that way circa 1900s, at least in the immediate streets north of Grand Central. I had seen a couple of similar photos also, so this is definitely not a fake or touched up photo.

It would have been nice if at least one avenue stayed this way (no cars) except for cross-avenue traffic, but that's probably not realistic, given the real estate value and the argument for progress. It's a nice snapshot of picturesque moment in time in the middle of a bussling city, enjoy it for what it was.