West Side Line

The West Side Line was built by the Hudson River Railroad, which completed the forty miles (64 km) to Peekskill on September 29, 1849, opened to Poughkeepsie by the end of that year, and extended to Albany (Rensselaer) in 1851.

[1][2] At 34th Street, the right-of-way curved into Eleventh Avenue, the dummy engine was detached, and the regular locomotive took the train.

The railroad crossed Spuyten Duyvil Creek on a drawbridge; a fatal wreck occurred there on January 13, 1882, when the Atlantic Express, stopped on the line, was rear-ended by a local train, telescoping the last two palace cars, where the stoves and lamps were upset and ignited the woodwork and upholstery.

The railroad acquired the former Episcopal church's St. John's Park property and built a large freight depot at Beach and Varick streets, which opened in 1868.

Work on the highway – named for Manhattan Borough President Julius Miller, who championed it – began in 1925, and the first section was dedicated on June 28, 1934.

His project, called the West Side Improvement, was twice as expensive as the Hoover Dam and created the Henry Hudson Parkway, as well as a railroad tunnel under the park.

The large 60th Street Yard served as the dividing point between the two-track realignment and a wider four-track line to the north.

[19] When additional funding later became available, one track along the northern part of the West Side Line was rebuilt for passenger service and named the Empire Connection.

[20] Transportation planners had long envisioned consolidating all intercity service to New York at Penn Station, but those efforts did not go beyond the planning stages until the 1980s.

Additionally, Amtrak had to pay $600,000 per year to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, operator of Grand Central, to use that station's tracks.

[21][22] Despite warnings by officials in March 1991, inadequate fencing along the line allowed a 3-year-old boy to enter the tracks, where he was struck and killed.

In the early 1980s, the tracks were closed for a significant period of time as the line was reconfigured to accommodate the expansion of the Javits Center.

Even after the line reopened, freight traffic never returned, and the elevated viaducts in Manhattan stood abandoned for over thirty years.

The park became a tourist attraction and spurred real estate development in adjacent neighborhoods, increasing real-estate values and prices along the route.