Contemporary New Yorkers know Avenue A as a downtown-only street spanning 14th Street to Houston.
So it’s a shock to the system to be faced with evidence that in the 19th and early 20th century city, Avenue A actually picked up again and ran 34 blocks through the Upper East Side, from 59th to 93rd Street.
Proof, aside from several old Manhattan maps? (Like this one, from the 1870s).
Check out the address engraved into the corners of P.S. 158, an elementary school on today’s York Avenue between 77th and 78th Streets.
“Ave. A” it clearly reads. And it should, because when the school opened in the 1890s, this was Avenue A.
York Avenue didn’t get its name until 1928, when the city officially decided to rename Avenue A uptown in honor of World War I hero Sergeant Alvin York (who was actually from Tennessee, but was feted by the city after the war ended).
The renaming had another purpose: It was hoped that a new name would be “symbolic of the rehabilitation of the East Side,” according to a New York Times article.
As far as I know, this is the only remaining vestige of Avenue A’s uptown stretch.
[Second image: NYPL]
Tags: Avenue A 77th Street, Avenue A Upper East Side, Avenue A uptown, History Avenue A, York Avenue Avenue A
Ephemeral New York 
January 28, 2019 at 12:21 pm |
Love this blog! I have been following you for years. I remember when you used to post several times a week. Now it’s only on Monday, Any chance you will go back to spreading the posts out?
January 28, 2019 at 3:19 pm |
Thanks Tommy! I would love to be able to post more often. Alas, the day job cuts into my posting time, unfortunately.
January 28, 2019 at 10:44 pm |
yeah those pesky jobs always get in the way.
January 29, 2019 at 4:01 am |
Yes, if only we didn’t need them, but New York is expensive….
January 29, 2019 at 12:05 am |
Good find.
I read somewhere that the numbering and lettering of our streets and avenues was at one time considered modern and symbolic our desire to be a classless society. We each own an address on a logical grid.
Of course the numbers themselves took on the weight of meaning like 5th Ave or 42nd Street. Or the bland beige of any upper east side address.
January 29, 2019 at 4:02 am |
Interesting…thanks Ty
January 29, 2019 at 8:39 pm |
I love this site but am yearning to see if pictures exist of the area I was born and raised in, Avenue B from 14 Street to 20th Street, now Stuyvesant Town. I’ve tried every source.
January 29, 2019 at 9:16 pm |
http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet Tax photos from 1939 and 1940 showing Ave B from 14th St to 20th. Search for block numbers 972-978 for the west side of Ave B and 982-987 for the east.
January 30, 2019 at 3:32 am
Thanks Ty, and Marilyn you can also look through the NYPL Digital Collections gallery
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ and the Museum of the City of New York’s digital portal:
https://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=Home
February 4, 2019 at 10:57 pm
I’ve ordered a photo of the house shown on the nycma site. It’s pretty expensive but a treasure for me find. I appreciate your showing me how to access the site. I’m still hoping for one more picture that might show my father’s grocery store on 15th St. & Ave. B I’m going to be persistent.
January 31, 2019 at 11:41 am |
I’m amazed how crisp and sharp the lettering is. Also the beige brick and cornice trim.
January 31, 2019 at 3:00 pm |
Yes, these 1890s-era school buildings were and still are beauties built to last.
March 18, 2019 at 1:44 am |
Alvin York got the now usual tickertape parade when he came to New York, with what was then the usual tickertape. He was offered contracts to perform on Broadway (basically either narrating his feat or re-enacting it) or to endorse products for vast sums of money.
His answer was simple: “Uncle Sam’s uniform is not for sale.”
He did receive donations from grateful Americans and put them into a Bible College in his native Tennessee, which still exists, run by his family descendants. They look like him, too.