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By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
A new proposal would reframe Midtown Manhattan’s Park Avenue— creating an actual park with pedestrian paths, benches and more green space.
As reported by the NY Times, the Department of Transportation has said that it will need to do extensive work on the over 100-year old Grand Central Train Shed beneath the avenue. The underground shed, which serves as hidden infrastructure for Metro-North Railroad trains, is in decrepit condition and will undergo extensive work. While they fix the two-level underground between Grand Central and Park Ave, they may as well spruce up the upper portion too. “Given that they have to rebuild the train shed,” said
Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president said, “they’re also going to rebuild the malls above — technically the medians are called malls.” Park Ave is famed for its flowering medians between the streets, especially along the residential portion north of 57th Street. The proposed green space upgrades would span from 46th Street to 57th Street, in the busy commercial corridor that famously includes the landmarked Lever House and Seagram Building.
The new medians on these streets would be wider, expanding from 20 feet to 48 feet, Levine said. The stakeholders, which include the City Planning Commission and Grand Central Partnership, are currently working on the first step of this plan— a $1 million “visioning” process, the Times reported. Design proposals are being requested during this phase. Levine said he’s confident the redevelopment will add value, saying “there will be a lot of greenery, a lot of benches. Maybe even some lawn features. And potentially performance space, potentially concessions, like cafes.”
Underground work on the train shed has already started near 47th Street. “They’ve removed that mall, and you can see how sad it looks without trees,” said Barbara McLaughlin, the president of the Fund for Park Avenue, a nonprofit organization that installs and maintains sculptures, flowers and trees on Park Ave. from 54th Street to 86th Street. McLaughlin said she was “thrilled” about the plan, and said that reimagining the space is “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Park Avenue is currently “not a place where people are encouraged to gather”, said McLaughlin who says the lovely malls today are “kind of dangerous”, with vehicles rushing past on both sides.
Park Ave, despite all its posh residents and tenants, never really had a park. Per the NY Times, back in the mid-1800s, railroad tracks ran through the avenue’s center, filling the area with smoke and soot. It was only in the early 1900’s that the tracks were finally covered, to help clean it up and allow it to attain its current glory. The medians were first erected then. In late 1920’s, with the launch of automobiles, the malls had been narrowed, so as to leave more space for several lanes of cars, and that’s when the pedestrian malls were lost.
“There are twin rationales for these projects: One is to deal with pedestrian overflow,” Levine said. The other would be “to create great public space — space that even can become a destination.” “This is a very exciting moment for street space in Manhattan,” Levine added.
