Ninth Avenue (Manhattan)

Ninth Avenue (Manhattan)

Ninth Avenue / Columbus Avenue is a southbound thoroughfare on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Traffic runs downtown (southbound) along the full stretch from Chelsea to the Upper West Side, except for the initial 3 blocks (from Gansevoort Street to 14th Street) where traffic runs northbound carrying traffic from Greenwich Street. In 2008 the portion between 31st and 14th Streets, and in 2011 the portion between 96th and 77th Streets, were remodeled with a bicycle lane between the eastern curb and the parking lane.

Ninth Avenue originates just south of West 14th Street at Gansevoort Street in the West Village, and extends uptown for 48 blocks until its intersection with West 59th Street, where it is re-signed as Columbus Avenue—named after Christopher Columbus. It continues without interruption through the Upper West Side to West 110th Street, where it is re-signed once more, as Morningside Drive, and runs north through Morningside Heights to 122nd Street.

Ninth Avenue reappears as a short street in Inwood, running from 201st to Broadway at the northern tip of Manhattan Island, interrupted for an eight-block stretch (from 207th to 215th Streets) by the New York City Subway 207th Street Yard. The addresses along this stretch are continuous with the lower portion of Ninth Avenue.

Above the ill-defined Lincoln Square, where ABC television network houses its corporate headquarters in a group of rehabilitated and modern buildings, where Columbus Avenue passes through the Central Park West Historic District, stretching from 67-68 Streets to 89th Street, the avenue presents a unified streetscape of 5 to 7 storey tenement buildings of brick and brownstone with discreet Romanesque and Italianate details, employing cast terracotta details and panels and courses of angle-laid brickwork. Many ornate tin cornices remain. The buildings are separated in mid-block by the narrowest of access alleys, giving glimpses of Ailanthus foliage in the side-street yards. The repeated designs of three or four commercial speculative builders, using the same features and detailing, add to the avenue's architectural unity. There are several generously-scaled pre-World War I apartment buildings and the former Endicott Hotel, as well as a small commercial block from the office of McKim, Mead, and White at 72nd Street.

A one block stretch of Ninth Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets is now known as "Oreo Way." The first Oreo cookies were manufactured in 1912 at the former Nabisco headquarters on this same Ninth Avenue block.

Ninth Avenue and Columbus Avenue were converted to carry one-way traffic southbound in two stages. South of its intersection with Broadway the avenue was converted on November 6, 1948. The rest to 110th Street was converted on December 6, 1951.