Ninth Avenue (Manhattan).html



Ninth Avenue at 49th St, facing South

International Food Festival

Ninth Avenue / Columbus Avenue is a southbound thoroughfare on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs downtown (southbound) along its full length. Ninth Avenue originates just south of West 14th Street at Gansevoort Street in the West Village, and extends uptown for 45 blocks until its intersection with West 59th Street, where it is re-signed (like the other West Side avenues) as Columbus Avenue—named after Christopher Columbus—but continues without interruption through the Upper West Side for 61 blocks to West 110th Street, where it is re-signed as Morningside Drive, and runs north through Morningside Heights to 122nd Street.

Ninth Avenue reappears as two short avenues between 201st and 208th Streets, and then between 215th to 225th Streets.

Above the ill-defined Lincoln Square, where ABC television network has its group of rehabilitated and modern buildings housing its corporate headquarters, stretching from 67-68 Streets to 89th Street, where it passes through the Central Park West Historic District, Columbus Avenue presents a unified streetscape of 5 to 7 storey tenement buildings of brick and brownstone with discreet Romanesque and Italianate details, employing cast terracotta details and panels and courses of angle-laid brickwork. Many ornate tin cornices remain. The buildings are separated in mid-block by the narrowest of access alleys, giving glimpses of Ailanthus foliage in the side-streeet yards. The repeated designs of three or four commercial speculative builders, using the same features and detailing, add to the avenue's architectural unity. There are several generously-scaled pre-World War I apartment buildings and the former Endicott Hotel, as well as a small commercial block from the office of McKim, Mead, and White at [[72nd Street (Manhattan)|72nd Street.

In art it is notable as the setting of Saul Steinberg's "View of the World from 9th Avenue".

Points of Interest

• Gansevoort Market
• Chelsea
• Church of the Holy Apostles and Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen [1]
• Port Authority Bus Terminal, 41st Street
• Hell's Kitchen
• The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is located on Ninth Avenue and 55th Street.
• John Jay College
• Roosevelt Hospital
• Church of St. Paul the Apostle
• The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is located at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and Broadway (near 65th Street).
• The 66th Street station is the only subway station on Ninth Avenue (actually Columbus).
• American Museum of Natural History

Revival of 9th Avenue

Former president Bill Clinton initiated a project to revitalize the 9th Avenue corridor centered around the Hell's Kitchen area. (Source: http://www.9thavenuerenaissance.com/). Several street fairs are held every year, including the Ninth Avenue Food Festival [2] in May.

Ninth Avenue Elevated

The Ninth Avenue Elevated was extended up the avenue by 1891. The rebuilding project was extended all the way north to 116th St., creating Manhattan's first three-track elevated, although center-track express service did not begin until 1916. The 9th Ave El was over 100 feet above the street at "Suicide Curve", which made a 90-degree turn from 9th Ave onto 110th St. then another from 110th St. onto 8th Avenue. The line ran until it was closed in 1940 and dismantled, following the extension of the Eighth Avenue subway up Central Park West.