Vanderbilt’s Trains Killed New Yorkers. The Solution Was Park Avenue

This is the story of Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt, the steamboat and railroad king who became the richest man in America. In 1869, at age 75, he built the largest train terminal in the world on 42nd Street, where the developed city barely reached. When his trains began killing people on Fourth Avenue, he struck a deal that made the city pay half the cost to fix it. The fix became Park Avenue.