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.

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