59th Street was a station on the demolished IRT Ninth Avenue Line. It had two levels. The lower level was built first and had two tracks and two side platforms that served local trains. The upper level was built as part of the Dual Contracts and had one track that served express trains. It closed on July 11, 1940. The next southbound stop was 50th Street for Ninth Avenue trains and Eighth Avenue for IRT Sixth Avenue Line trains. The next northbound stop was 66th Street.
On September 11, 1905, 12 people were killed and 42 injured in the Ninth Avenue derailment when a train that had just left the station was wrongly switched onto the curve at 53rd Street.
Famous quotes containing the words street, ninth and/or avenue:
“If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don’t care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
““Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed” was the ninth beatitude.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Along the avenue of cypresses,
All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices
Of linen, go the chanting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . .”
—D.H. (David Herbert)