Unlike the IRT Flushing Line, which celebrated its centennial with some fanfare this year, the IRT Woodlawn Line, which goes above an el up Jerome Avenue most of its route, spent its centennial relatively quietly on June 2, 1917, doing what it has always done (apparently a special Metrocard had been issued). To be fair many subways and els are celebrating centennials in the years between 1915 and 1920, and I imagine there isn’t time to mark all of those anniversaries.
This is from an ambulation I undertook in Tremont, Fordham and Belmont in February 2017, starting at the Burnside Avenue station. Running over hilly territory, Burnside Avenue runs from Sedgwick to Webster Avenues between 179th and 180th Streets, divided into East and West at Jerome Avenue. It was named for Ambrose Burnside, a Civil War general who had a mixed record. He later became Rhode Island governor and later, a senator from the same state.
… Burnside had repeatedly demonstrated that it had been a military tragedy to give him a rank higher than colonel. One reason might have been that, with all his deficiencies, Burnside never had any angles of his own to play; he was a simple, honest, loyal soldier, doing his best even if that best was not very good, never scheming or conniving or backbiting. Also, he was modest; in an army many of whose generals were insufferable prima donnas, Burnside never mistook himself for Napoleon. Physically he was impressive: tall, just a little stout, wearing what was probably the most artistic and awe-inspiring set of whiskers in all that bewhiskered Army. He customarily wore a high, bell-crowned felt hat with the brim turned down and a double-breasted, knee-length frock coat, belted at the waist—a costume which, unfortunately, is apt to strike the modern eye as being very much like that of a beefy city cop of the 1880s.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop, and as always, “comment…as you see fit.”
6/19/17