42nd Street (Manhattan)


42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, running primarily in Midtown Manhattan and Hell's Kitchen. The street is the site of some of New York's best known buildings, including the headquarters of the United Nations, Chrysler Building, Grand Central Terminal, New York Public Library Main Branch, Times Square, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The street is known for its theaters, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square, and as such is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection.

History

Early history

During the American Revolutionary War, a cornfield near 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue was where General George Washington angrily attempted to rally his troops after the British landing at Kip's Bay, which scattered many of the American militiamen. Washington's attempt put him in danger of being captured, and his officers had to persuade him to leave. The rout eventually subsided into an orderly retreat.
John Jacob Astor purchased a farm in 1803 that ran from 42nd Street to 46th Street west of Broadway to the Hudson River.

19th century

The street was designated by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 that established the Manhattan street grid as one of 15 east-west streets that would be in width.
In 1835, the city's Street Committee, after receiving numerous complaints about lack of access for development above 14th Street, decided to open up all lots which had already been plotted on the city grid up to 42nd Street, which thus became – for a time – the northern boundary of the city.
Cornelius Vanderbilt began the construction of Grand Central Depot in 1869 on 42nd Street at Fourth Avenue as the terminal for his Central, Hudson, Harlem and New Haven commuter rail lines, because city regulations required that trains be pulled by horse below 42nd Street. The Depot, which opened in 1871, was replaced by Grand Central Terminal in 1913.
Between the 1870s and 1890s, 42nd Street became the uptown boundary of the mainstream theatre district, which started around 23rd Street, as the entertainment district of the Tenderloin gradually moved northward.

20th century

The corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, was the eastern terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which was conceived and mapped in 1913.
Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley's 1933 film musical 42nd Street, starring 30s heartthrobs Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, displays the bawdy and colorful mixture of Broadway denizens and lowlifes in Manhattan during the Depression. In 1980, it was turned into a successful Broadway musical which ran until 1989, and which was revived for a four-year run in 2001. In the words of the Al Dubin and Harry Warren title song, on 42nd Street you can find:
Little from the Fifties, innocent and sweet,
Sexy ladies from the Eighties who are indiscreet,
They're side by side, they're glorified,
Where the underworld can meet the elite
Naughty, gawdy, bawdy, sporty, Forty-second Street!
From the late 1950s until the late 1980s, 42nd Street, nicknamed the "Deuce", was the cultural center of American grindhouse theaters, which spawned an entire subculture. The book Sleazoid Express, a travelogue of the 42nd Street grindhouses and the films they showed, describes the unique blend of people who made up the theater-goers:
depressives hiding from jobs, sexual obsessives, inner-city people seeking cheap diversions, teenagers skipping school, adventurous couples on dates, couples-chasers peeking on them, people getting high, homeless people sleeping, pickpockets...

While the street outside the theatres was populated with:
phony drug salesman... low-level drug dealers, chain snatchers... unkies alone in their heroin/cocaine dreamworld... predatory chickenhawks spying on underage trade looking for pickups... male prostitutes of all ages... ranssexuals, hustlers, and closety gays with a fetishistic homo- or heterosexual itch to scratch... It was common to see porn stars whose films were playing at the adult houses promenade down the block.... Were you a freak? Not when you stepped onto the Deuce. Being a freak there would get you money, attention, entertainment, a starring part in a movie. Or maybe a robbery and a beating.

For much of the mid and late 20th century, the area of 42nd Street near Times Square was home to activities often considered unsavory, including peep shows.

Revitalization

In the early 1990s, city government encouraged a cleanup of the Times Square area. In 1990, the city government took over six of the historic theatres on the block of 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, and New 42nd Street, a not-for-profit organization, was formed to oversee their renovation and reuse, as well as to construct new theatres and a rehearsal space.
In 1993, Disney Theatrical Productions bought the New Amsterdam Theatre, which it renovated a few years later. It is now the flagship for Disney's theatrical productions in New York.
Since the mid-1990s, the block has again become home to mainstream theatres and several multi-screen mainstream movie theatres, along with shops, restaurants, hotels, and attractions such as Madame Tussauds wax museum and Ripley's Believe It or Not that draw millions to the city every year. This area is now co-signed as "New 42nd Street" to signify this change.

Notable places

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Subway

Every New York City Subway line that crosses 42nd Street has a stop on 42nd Street:
There are two subway lines under 42nd Street. The 42nd Street Shuttle runs under 42nd Street between Broadway/Seventh Avenue and Park Avenue. The IRT Flushing Line curves from Eleventh Avenue to 41st Street, under which it runs until Fifth Avenue; shifts to 42nd Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues; and continues under the East River to Queens. Each line stops at Times Square and Grand Central, though the Fifth Avenue station is also served by the.
In the past, every former IRT elevated line had a station at 42nd Street:
A fifth station extended over 42nd Street as a western spur from the Third Avenue Line to Grand Central Depot, later Grand Central Station, and finally Grand Central Terminal.

Bus

's M42 bus runs the length of 42nd Street between the Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises ferry terminal on the Hudson River and the headquarters of the United Nations on the East River. Its predecessor, the 42nd Street Crosstown Line streetcar, had used 42nd Street. In 2019, bus lanes were installed along the length of the street.
42nd Street is also used by several Staten Island express buses.

In popular culture

In addition, "forty-deuce" is street slang for Manhattan's former live peep shows district on 42nd Street. The following works reference the phrase "forty-deuce":