History
Most of modern NY 2 east of 1st Street in Troy was originally designated by the New York State Legislature as Route 42, an unsigned legislative route, in 1911. East of Troy, however, Route 42 was routed on Pawling and Pinewoods avenues. Route 42 was extended west across the Hudson River to Schenectady in 1914 by way of what is now NY 2 and NY 7. When the first set of posted routes in New York were assigned in 1924, the portion of Route 42 west of 1st Street became part of NY 9. The rest of Route 42 remained unnumbered until the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, when it was designated as NY 96. Near Troy, NY 96 bypassed Pawling and Pinewoods avenues to the north on Brunswick Road instead of following the path of Route 42. The alignments of NY 96 and NY 2, a highway extending from Owego to Rochester in the Finger Lakes region of New York, were swapped in the early 1940s, placing NY 2 on the Troy–Massachusetts routing.
Around the same time as the designation swap, NY 2 was extended south to NY 5 in Albany by way of overlaps with US 4, then routed on 1st Street, and NY 32. In between the two routes, NY 2 was routed on modern NY 378 and crossed the Hudson River by way of the Troy–Menands Bridge. NY 2 was rerouted slightly in the early 1950s to leave NY 32 at the junction of Wolfert Avenue and Broadway and follow Broadway into downtown Albany, where it ended at Madison Avenue (US 9 and US 20). The route was truncated to the northern end of the NY 32 overlap in the mid-1960s, then to 3rd Street (US 4) in Troy on January 1, 1970. The former routing of NY 2 between NY 32 and US 4 became an extension of NY 378.
Construction on a new limited-access highway through the town of Colonie between I-87 and I-787 began in the early 1980s. At the time, the roadway was known as "NY 7 Alternate". However, when it opened in 1986, it became a realignment of NY 7 instead. NY 7's former surface routing from I-87 in Latham to US 4 in Troy then became a westward extension of NY 2.
Read more about this topic: New York State Route 2
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