23rd Street (Manhattan)

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East 23rd Street, looking west from 23rd & Park. Some trees in Madison Square can be seen one block ahead on the right side of the street. May 2005.
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East 23rd Street, looking west from 23rd & Park. Some trees in Madison Square can be seen one block ahead on the right side of the street. May 2005.
The famous Flatiron Building sits on the intersection of 23rd Street (front), Broadway (left), and 5th Avenue (right).
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The famous Flatiron Building sits on the intersection of 23rd Street (front), Broadway (left), and 5th Avenue (right).

23rd Street is a large thoroughfare across Manhattan in New York City. It runs from river to river across Manhattan, carrying two-way traffic. As with Manhattan's other streets, West 23rd Street stretches west of Fifth Avenue (at Madison Square Park) and East 23rd Street runs to the east.

In the late 19th century, the western part of 23rd Street was to American theater what Broadway is today.

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[edit] West 23rd Street

West 23rd Street carves through the heart of Chelsea.

In the late 19th century West 23rd Street was the center of American theater, with the Opera House Palace and Pike's Opera House one block away and Proctor's Theater ("continuous daily vaudeville") across the street from the Hotel Chelsea. 23rd Street remained New York's main theater strip until The Empire opened on Broadway some twenty blocks uptown, ushering in a new era of theater.

The Hotel Chelsea, New York's first co-op apartment complex, was built here in 1884; it was New York's tallest building until 1902.

[edit] East 23rd Street

East 23rd Street, which runs between Fifth Avenue and the East River (FDR Drive), is one of the main streets running through Manhattan's neighborhood of Gramercy Park. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife), headquartered at 1 Madison Avenue at East 23rd Street, played a significant role in shaping the character of development along East 23rd Street in the early 20th century.

Opposite Madison Square Park on East 23rd Street are two skyscrapers originally built by MetLife. 1 Madison Avenue, with its ornate clocktower face, was one of Manhattan's first skyscrapers. [1] 11 Madison Avenue was intended to be the base of a much taller skyscraper, but the onset of the Depression forced MetLife to scale back its plans. Even so, the building stands today as an Art Deco masterpiece.

On the far east side of East 23rd is Peter Cooper Village, one of MetLife's experiments in middle-income community building. Peter Cooper Village was a sister project to MetLife's Stuyvesant Town, which was built across 20th Street to the south. [2]

On October 17, 1966, this street was also witness to New York's deadliest fire in terms of firefighters killed until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The "23rd Street Fire", as it came to be called, began in a cellar at 7 East 22nd Street and soon spread to the basement of 6 East 23rd Street, a five-story commercial building that housed a drugstore at street level. Twelve firefighters were killed; two chiefs, two lieutenants, and six firefighters plunged into the flaming cellar, while two more firefighters were killed by the blast of flame and heat on the first floor.

The Flatiron Building is on the south side of the street at Broadway. Wind gusts caused by the building's triangular shape, and the wind gusts that supposedly lifted women's skirts, is said to be the origin of the term "23 skidoo".

[edit] Public transit

Every New York City Subway line that crosses 23rd Street has a local station there:

Port Authority Trans-Hudson has a heavy rail station at 23rd Street as well.

Additionally, MTA New York City Transit's M23 bus runs the length of 23rd Street. This replaced the horse-drawn and later electric-powered Twenty-Third Street Railway. In 2003, the Straphangers Campaign listed the M23 as one of the slowest in the city, winning its "Pokey Award."

[edit] Intersections from east to west

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Manhattan Numbered Streets (New York City)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79
80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99
100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119
120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139
140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159
160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179
180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199
200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219
220
Bi-Directional Streets of Midtown Manhattan
West End
West Side Highway
110th Street
Central Park North
Central Park South
59th Street
57th Street
42nd Street
34th Street
23rd Street
14th Street
Houston Street
East End
FDR Drive
WSH (12) | Riverside | 11 (West End) | 10 (Amsterdam) | Dyer | 9 | 8 or CPW | 7 | 6 or Lenox | 5 | Madison | Park (4) | Lexington | 3 | 2 | 1 | A or York | B or East End | C | D | FDR