Grand Concourse Buses - History

History

Concourse Bus Line, Inc. was incorporated in early July 1921 by Major Emit Leindorf, deputy police commissioner in charge of motor transport under Mayor Hylan. The company soon began operating on the Grand Concourse as part of Hylan's "emergency bus lines". The Third Avenue Railway obtained an injunction against the operation on early March 1923, leading the city to assign two franchises to the company in mid-April, from Grand Concourse and Mosholu Parkway south to Fifth Avenue (Harlem, Manhattan) and Melrose Avenue and 150th Street (the Hub, Bronx). Along with a route to the Rockaways, the Concourse service was one of only two of Hylan's lines unaffected by a July 1923 injunction, since they had franchises, but were discontinued anyway by September 1924 due to the failure of the five-cent fare to pay the costs.

The franchises were reassigned to the Fifth Avenue Coach Company, which began operating the routes on October 11, 1924 for ten cents. (The Manhattan line had been truncated to 138th Street in the Bronx.) On September 14, 1927, the routes were again reassigned to the Surface Transportation Corporation, the bus subidiary of the Third Avenue Railway, as two of its initial twelve routes. The bankrupt Surface Transportation Corporation's routes were taken over by Fifth Avenue Coach Lines in 1956, and the New York City Transit Authority subsidiary Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority acquired all of the Fifth Avenue Coach routes in 1962.