This 1912 photo shows what was then the end of Seventh Avenue, with Greenwich Avenue to the left and West 11th Street on the right.
It looks quaint and Village-like, but it wouldn’t last much longer.
City officials had already decided to extend Seventh Avenue to Varick Street to build the IRT Seventh Avenue subway. A lengthened Seventh Avenue would also improve traffic flow downtown, they reasoned.
So the headquarters of Monahan’s, a shipping company, met the wrecking ball a year later. And a not particularly attractive thoroughfare christened Seventh Avenue South came into existence.
Here’s the same stretch of the Village today. In the 1912 photo, you can see the fence of St. Vincent’s Hospital at the far left. The ghost of the hospital is still there.
Tags: building the IRT, early West Village, extending Seventh Avenue, Greenwich Village, New York City in the 1910s, Seventh Avenue South, West Village history
Ephemeral New York 
May 1, 2010 at 4:41 am |
Those were the days when city officials actually cared about public transit, and roads and buildings were an afterthought. It’s just the opposite today – transit is in shambles and buildings are sacred (unless they are to be replaced by a parking lot, of course).
May 3, 2010 at 11:35 pm |
You can still see many of the apartment buildings on 7th Ave, between Greenwich Ave and Houston Street, that were practically cut in half to make room for 7th ave. Some of the buildings are triangular in shape because of it.
March 13, 2023 at 3:08 am |
[…] the interior of the block, probably felt very private in the 19th century. That privacy ended when Seventh Avenue was extended through the Village in the late 1910s, slicing through the block and putting the tearoom on view from the […]
March 13, 2023 at 1:50 pm |
Looks so different. My sister passed away at St. Vincent’s in August 2008. I think that was the first hospital to have ambulances (pulled by horses) with Catholic nuns delivering first aid enroute to St Vincent’s.