On Facebook, William Padron supplies this map displayed map inside a vintage-1917 IRT Lo-V type trailer subway car #4902 at the New York Transit Museum. Lincoln (52nd), Fisk (69th), Junction Avenue (Junction Boulevard) are still on station signage on the #7 Flushing Line, though it’s been almost a century since numbers replaced the names. Or in some cases, new numbers replaced old numbers; 82nd Street was originally numbered 25. Alburtis Avenue has long been known as 103rd Street.
A curiosity I have encountered here is a station corresponding to 111th called ‘DePeyster-Tiemann.” Let’s take a look at these names, because I presume their spots on old NYC maps refer to the same persons. Abraham DePeyster (1657-1728) was a Dutch Colonial 17th-Century New Amsterdam mayor born in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. He became a colonial merchant, chief justice, colonial governor, treasurer, and mayor from 1691-1694. His seated statue has moved around quite a bit in lower Manhattan.
Tiemann Avenue likely refers to the namesake of the Grant’s Tomb-area Tiemann Place in Manhattan, Mayor Daniel Tiemann (1805-1899), a paint manufacturer who was elected in 1858, who according to Henry Moscow’s The Street Book, was the first mayor to prescribe mounting street signs on lampposts and telephone poles. I think I may have gotten along with the guy. The Pelham Bay area in the Bronx also has a Tiemann Avenue, as numerous early NYC mayors are name checked in Bronx streets.
This 1915 Belcher Hyde map shows Roosevelt and Tiemann Avenues, but DePeyster is nowhere to be found. That’s not a surprise, as street names were in a great deal of flux in the early 20th Century before the overall numbering system took hold. In 1915 you can see how sparsely populated the area was, but the elevated Flushing Line was on the way; they built it, they came.
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5/28/22
15 comments
According to Steve Morse, Tiemann is now 111th street and DePeyster is now 112th street.
I can’t find the Steve Morse pages anymore, the link I was using is broken. Can you point me to the page?
Kevin, this seems to be working: https://stevemorse.org/
Any research on the Fulton street El station called Eastern Parkway? I believe it was opened as part of the first Dual Contracts. The station was sandwich between Atlantic Ave and Stutter Ave. However, I am puzzled as to its construction being so close to stutter Ave station.
De Peyster ran n and s was probably 51st Street (Central) on that map running a block w of Tiemann (Myrtle). This real estate legal transaction from 1910 names De Peyster. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/102727779/ What a mess you can see why they wanted to number the whole damn thing.
Does any subway expert know why the tracks between those last three stations are shown as white and red on the map instead of black and red on the rest of the line? Thanks.
Most likely, the different color patterns differentiate between portions of the line that were opened versus U/C. The map, upon further examination, appears to be from after Oct. 13, 1925, the date when the #7 line service (then just called Corona Line) opened from Alburtis Ave. (103rd St.) to 111th St. The stations at Willets Point and Main Street opened May 7, 1927, and January 2, 1928, respectively, so in 1925 those two stations were no doubt being built. Source for date information:
https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/IRT_Flushing_Line
The subway map illustrated likely dates from 1917 when the #7 Line, then called the Corona Line, reached its first terminal at 103rd St. (Alburtis Ave.). The terminal remained there for eight years. In 1925 the first piece of a three-station extension was opened to 111th Street; in 1927 and 1928 the final two stations opened and the line became known as “Corona-Flushing” because of the new terminal at Main Street. During the 1917-1925 period Queens was adapting the now-familiar borough-wide street numbering system to replace its old village and hamlet names. So this map indeed anticipated the extension to Main Street – Flushing but used the old street name for what likely became 111th Street by the time the new subway extension was opened. Source for this info: https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/IRT_Flushing_Line
It’s noteworthy that all but three of the #7 line stations east of Queensboro Plaza originally received a principal and subordinate name, e.g. “61st St.-Woodside”, 82nd St.-Jackson Heights”, “Main Street-Flushing.” The three exceptions are Junction Blvd., 111th Street, and Willets Point Blvd. The last one is today called “Mets – Willets Point” for obvious reasons that did not apply a century ago.
When the #7 line trains consisted of the former redbird cars, they carried a destination sign reading “111th St.-Corona” because in rush hours some local trains began or ended there. The station sign only said “111th Street.” And no station sign there ever said “Tiemann Avenue and DePeyster Street.”
Regardless, a very interesting history factoid. May have something to do with the fact that Roosevelt Avenue itself was a new street laid out specifically as the route for the new subway line east of the 46th St.-Bliss St. station. I’ve seen old pictures of the line’s construction showing an elevated structure being built atop a rural dirt road, but I couldn’t locate one to post a link here.
Alburtis Avenue station was also known as 104thSt for a while. Subway maps of the mid 1920s showed both the Alburtis Avenue with 104th Street in parentheses.
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104th St station sign
https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?85062
I am correcting my post.
It was subway maps in the 1930s that have Alburtis Avenue and 104th St as co-names of the station.
It is on both IRT and BMT maps since they provided joint service under the dual contracts.
BMT map 1933
https://s3.amazonaws.com/nycsubway.org/images/maps/bmt_1931.pdf
IRT map 1939
https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?/img/maps/irt_1939_small.jpg
BTW the map referred to at the top of the article in IRT car 4902 is from 1924 (one of these maps is in the Library of Congress collection)
If you’re looking for DePeyster you’ll have to go over one plate: 1915 Queens Vol. 2A, Newtown, Plate 9
N.B: DePesyter Street did not exist prior to ca. 1909, at least if you go by maps. Why? As per the 1909 Newtown atlas plate, the land through which DePeyster Street would soon after be cut was still the property of the land owner, Mr. George L. Elliott.
Well how do you like that.
I can understand the instinct to tie the names of DePeyster and Tiemann Streets in Corona to the politcians cited, but in going through some of the old Newtown Registers it appears the actual connection is to families with the DePeyster and Tiemann surnames — possibly, of course, related to the former mayors — living in the Corona vicinity when the streets would have been laid out. Also discovered among the Newtown Register spelunking was advertisements taken out by the Queensboro Corporation ca. 1910-1912 touting the development of Elliott Manor which just happens to be on the Elliott property I had referenced in an earlier comment.
Here is the Morse link.
https://stevemorse.org/census/changes.html