Audubon Park Historic District
AP
Audubon Park viewed from the southwest, May 1905
George C. Wheeler, photographed Audubon Park May, 1905 on what appears to be a very busy day - perhaps a Sunday. To have captured this angle, he must have been standing atop the Audubon Park Apartments, which were then under construction. The focal point of the picture is the Church of the Intercession, which then stood on the corner of Broadway and 158th Street (the church's second location). The road branching from Broadway, and winding up the hillside over the Hudson (upper left) is the Boulevard Lafayette, which would become part of Riverside Drive. The house at center left is the only building in the picture that exists today. Center right is the triangle of land that the Grinnell apartment house now occupies. In his Memoir, George Bird Grinnell recalled that his family pastured a cow there and had a vegetable garden where the updown subway kiosk stood.
The IRT opened continuous service to 157th Street in December 1904, only a few months after the initial opening of the subway to 145th Street. However, the real opening had been Saturday, October 29, just three days after the official opening. Columbia was playing Yale in football at the American League Baseball Park, and "the subway officials voluntarily added to their responsibilities" by opening the tunnel to 157th Street for four and a half hours. Approximately 20,000 passengers used the service, including the first "drunks" to be arrested on the subway. (New York Times, October 30, 1904, p. 12)
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Detail of uptown subway kiosk: 157th Street, IRT 1
First used
October 29, 1905
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