Fifth Avenue Coach Company

The Fifth Avenue Coach Company was incorporated in New York on July 25, 1896, as a reorganization of the Fifth Avenue Transportation Company, Ltd. (1885-95). The earlier firm held a franchise for operating horse-drawn omnibuses on Fifth Avenue from Bleecker to 89th Streets, streetcar tracks being banned from that fashionable thoroughfare. The reorganized company expanded the system by adding a number of branch lines.

The company became a subsidiary of the Third Avenue Railroad Company, a streetcar operator, in 1898, and by a process of consolidation became a subsidiary of the New York Transportation Company a year later. Between 1900 and 1907 the Metropolitan Street Railway Company monopolized surface transportation on Manhattan Island, and the Fifth Avenue Coach Company acted as affiliate. Horse-drawn vehicles gave way to gasoline-powered buses in 1907. Under the competition from the subways and elevateds, the Metropolitan system began to break up into its component parts.

The largest part of the system was reorganized as the New York Railways Company in 1912, when the Fifth Avenue Coach Company also gained its independence. In 1924 Fifth Avenue Coach Company became a subsidiary of The Omnibus Corporation, a holding company that controlled the bus systems in New York City and Chicago.

In 1953 The Omnibus Corporation acquired the Hertz car and truck rental business and sold its bus operations to local management. The assets of Fifth Avenue Coach were sold to a former subsidiary, the New York City Omnibus Corporation, on November 5, 1954, and the Fifth Avenue Coach Company was dissolved at the end of the year. New York City Omnibus was renamed Fifth Avenue Coach Lines, Inc., on June 1, 1956. As the private bus lines competed with the city-owned subways, a strike in March 1962 was used as a pretext for the city to take over the properties of Fifth Avenue Coach lines by condemnation.