Why a Turtle Bay YMCA is the “railroad branch”

The first YMCA opened in 1852 in Manhattan (the mission was to “provide young men new to the city a Christian alternative to the attractions of city life”), and since then, the Y has been an integral part of New York City.

But one in particular, the Vanderbilt YMCA on East 47th Street between Third and Second Avenues, has an interesting name inscribed above the entrance: The Railroad Branch.

The location seems removed from the energy and activity of Grand Central Terminal, five blocks and three avenues away. But there is a connection.

The branch was originally established in 1875 “to provide housing for the nation’s railroad men,” states the YMCA’s New York website.

“One of many “Railroad YMCAs” throughout New York City and across the country, the forerunner of the Vanderbilt YMCA was housed in the basement of the New York Rail Station on the site of today’s Grand Central Terminal.”

“These railroad workers found clean overnight accommodations, affordable meals, and an array of programs to occupy and enrich their time between journeys,” explains the website. Among these programs were Sunday church services and a library and reading room.

“Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was the initial branch chairman, personally led Sunday Bible classes for the railroad workers and their families,” according to Y records.

The current building opened in 1932, but it must have been decades since any railroad workers bunked there.

[Second Photo: Grand Central Terminal in 1875]

When cows grazed next to Grand Central

They did at least until the 1870s, when this grainy photo was taken—showing a couple of bovines relaxing in a pasture at Lexington Avenue and 45th Street.

That’s a stone’s throw from Grand Central Terminal’s train shed, which was built at Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue) in the 40s, according to New York: An Illustrated History.

“In the distance looms the northern end of the vast iron-and-glass train shed of Grand Central Depot,” the photo caption reads.

That train shed and the adjacent station were replaced by the Beaux-Arts Grand Central Terminal that still stands today.

Here’s more farm animals grazing and chilling in New York.

Subway mosaics that supply a little history

I’ve always loved the colorful mosaics that decorate certain subway stations. They give you a local history lesson while you’re waiting for your train—when the mosaics aren’t too grimy, that is.

The Borough Hall stop on the 2 and 3 line features this colonial-looking borough hall building (left).

At Christopher Street, the platform is lined with mosaics of Newgate prison (right), which jutted out into the Hudson around Christopher and West Streets until the 1820s.

Images of Peter Stuyvesant’s Bouwerie (left) adorn Union Square, close to where the original Bouwerie was in the early 19th century.

And of course, there are the train mosaics (right) at Grand Central Terminal, a tribute to railway titan Cornelius Vanderbilt, who opened Grand Central Depot in 1871.

A French chateau on old Fifth Avenue

In the early 1880s, W.K. Vanderbilt (grandson of Cornelius) and his wife, Alva, moved into this French Renaissance–style mansion on pristine Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, near where various Vanderbilts had also constructed luxe gilded-age houses. 

Alva, who later became a prominent suffragist, helped architect Richard Morris Hunt (he also designed the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) plan it out. She was determined to make her mark on New York’s movers and shakers.

Her efforts probably paid off. It’s a pretty impressive home.

Sold in 1926 to a real-estate developer, the mansion was demolished and replaced by—no surprise—an office building.