Later Means of Communication 231 



River railroads took possession of the new station; but, owing 

 to differences between them and the New Haven road, the 

 last continued to use the Twenty-seventh Street station for 

 about a year and a half longer; then the site was taken for 

 the Madison Square Garden. The freight station at Franklin 

 Street was used for several years after this, the freight cars 

 being hauled through Fourth Avenue and the Bowery by means 

 of horses until the lease of the premises expired, when the 

 Harlem freight went to the old Hudson River yards at Thir- 

 tieth Street and Tenth Avenue and to St. John's Park, and 

 that of the New Haven went to the water front on South 

 Street and to the yards at North New York and Port Morris, 

 both within the Borough. 



We have thus seen how the passenger station has worked 

 its way uptown. The congestion of trains in the Park Avenue 

 tunnel and the enormous passenger traffic concentrated in the 

 Grand Central Station called forth the best efforts of the 

 engineers of the railroads, and a scheme of improvements, 

 involving the spending of many millions of dollars, has been 

 underway at the Grand Central Terminal during the past 

 five years. Notwithstanding the magnitude of the work 

 and the expenditure of money, there are some observers who 

 think that these great improvements will be comparatively 

 temporary, and that the station will have to be moved event- 

 ually above the Harlem River. In view of this fact, the North 

 Side Board of Trade submitted a scheme to the proper authori- 

 ties in the fall of 1902, before work was begun at the terminal, 

 for a grand union station on the Harlem River, with Third 

 and Fourth avenues and East 138th Street as its other bound- 

 aries. This site would be convenient for all the existing 

 trolley lines on Third Avenue, for the Suburban branch of the 

 New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, for the West- 



