Lexington Avenue (Manhattan)
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Lexington Avenue, often abbreviated by New Yorkers as "Lex," is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along its 5.5 mile (8.9 km), 110-block route, Lexington Avenue runs through Harlem, Carnegie Hill, the Upper East Side, Midtown, and Murray Hill to a point of origin that is centered on Gramercy Park. South of Gramercy Park, the axis continues as Irving Place to East 14th Street.
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[edit] History
Lexington Avenue was not one of the streets included in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 street grid, and thus does not also have a numerical designation, and the addresses for cross streets do not start at an even Hundred number. The portion of Lexington Avenue below 42nd Street dates from 1832, when Samuel Ruggles, a lawyer and real estate developer, established Gramercy Park, and established the street to provide north-south access[1].
The portion above East 42nd Street was reconstructed at the same time as the IRT Lexington Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. The widened street and the subway line both opened on July 17, 1918.[2]
Parallel to Lexington Avenue lies Park Avenue to its west and Third Avenue to its east. The avenue is largely commercial at ground level, with offices above. There are clusters of hotels on Lexington Avenue in the "30s" and "40s" (from Lexington's intersection with 30th Street through to its intersection with 49th Street, roughly) and apartment buildings farther north.
Lexington Avenue is named for the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battle of the American Revolutionary War.
Lexington Avenue was almost used in the 1955 movie The Seven Year Itch in which Marilyn Monroe shot what would become her most famous scene. Standing on a subway grating outside the Trans-Lux Theater, her skirt billows up from the wind underneath. However, the footage shot on September 15th, 1954, on the corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty Second Street, was deemed unsuitable because of the noise made by the thousands of onlookers. The scene was re-shot in the studio[3].
The July 18, 2007 New York City steam explosion sent a geyser of hot steam up from beneath the avenue at 41st Street resulting in one death and more than 40 injuries.
[edit] Public transportation
Above ground
General cab service is available for hailing. The following buses use Lexington Avenue (northbound buses run along 3rd Avenue):
Underground
The IRT Lexington Avenue Line of the New York City Subway runs under Lexington Avenue north of 42nd Street (at Grand Central Terminal); south of Grand Central this subway line runs under Park Avenue until 14th Street.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- ^ Henry Moscow:The Street Book; Fordham University Press 1978. P.69.
- ^ Cunningham, Joseph and DeHart, Leonard: A History of the New York City Subway System; 1993 - John Schmidt, Robert Giglio and Kathleen Lang P.51.
- ^ Seven Year Itch
