The skyscraper alley along Sixth Avenue looking south from 49th Street
Sixth Avenue is a major avenue in New York City's borough of Manhattan. Although the Avenue's official name was changed to Avenue of the Americas in 1945 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia1 New Yorkers remained faithful to the old name. After the name change, the street signs carried a unique design and the streetlights were adorned with "Avenue of the Americas" medallions (many of these were removed in 1992 when the majority of the streetlights were replaced). Since New Yorkers seldom use this term, calling the avenue by that name has even become a shibboleth of sorts for something a tourist in the city might say (such as mispronouncing "Houston Street"). To avoid confusion among visitors, the street was signed as both Avenue of the Americas and Sixth Avenue in the 1980s.
Traffic on Sixth Avenue moves uptown (northbound). At its southern end, Sixth Avenue was extended in 1926 from Bleecker Street south through Little Italy. "Ten thousand people were displaced, most of them Italian immigrants who knew no other home in America".2 This was done in order to ease traffic in the Holland Tunnel and to intersect Church Street diagonally a few blocks south of Canal Street.
The skyscraper alley along Sixth Avenue looking north from 40th Street
Sixth Avenue is served by the IND Sixth Avenuesubway line. The PATH train to New Jersey also runs under Sixth Avenue as far as 34th Street. Formerly the elevatedIRT Sixth Avenue Line ran up Sixth Avenue, darkening the street and reducing its real-estate value. After the "el" came down in stages, beginning in Greenwich Village in 1938-39,4, Sixth Avenue, in Midtown, began being rebuilt in the 1960s as an all-but-uninterrupted avenue of corporate headquarters housed in glass slab towers of International Modernist style,5 of which the outstanding example is the CBS Building at 52nd Street, by Eero Saarinen (1965), dubbed "Black Rock" from its dark granite piers that run from base to crown with a break, this designated New York City landmark is Saarinen's only skyscraper.
In the mid-1970s, the city "spruced up" the street, including the addition of patterned brick crosswalks, repainting of streetlamps, and new pedestrian plazas. Special lighting, which is rare through most of the city, was also installed.6
Recently, the National Hockey League opened a flagship retail store on Sixth Ave. between West 46th and West 47th Sts.
References
^ ab "Name of 6th Ave. to Be Changed To the Avenue of the Americas; Council Votes Proposal at Mayor's Request, 12 to 1, After a Debate Rages for 2 Hours --Isaacs Fears Oblivion for Historic Sites", The New York Times, September 21, 1945. p. 23
^ Joyce Gold, From Trout Stream to Bohemia: A Walking Guide to Greenwich Village History (1988:49); blank side walls facing the "uninspiring thoroughfare" (WPA Guide to New York City [1939] 1982:138) and small leftover spaces forming "vest-pocket parks" bear witness to this early example of urban renewal.
^ "What's in a Street Rename? Disorder", The New York Times, July 20, 1987. p. B1
^ The el had angled west at 53rd Street; its effect can still be seen on Sixth Avenue: below 53rd Street the avenue formerly of small-scale tenements has been entirely rebuilt, whereas above 53rd Street the avenue is still lined with handsome pre-War residential and commercial blocks.
