The Fifth Avenue Coach Company, incorporated in 1896, was a horse-drawn omnibus line originally founded in 1885 as the Fifth Avenue Transportation Company (Ltd.) to discourage the laying of trolley tracks on the fashionable two-way thoroughfare. Battery operated vehicles were quickly abandoned after their introduction in 1900 as a result of their expense and inefficiency. Horse-drawn London-type omnibuses continued to be used until 1907, when they were replaced by gasoline-driven motor coaches with French engines and London chassis. The company began producing their own motor coaches in 1914 and became well known for their double-decker models.

The Fifth Avenue Coach Company became a subsidiary of the Third Avenue Railway Company in 1898 and the New York Transportation Company in 1899, gaining its independence in 1912. In 1924 it became a subsidiary of the Omnibus Corporation, which controlled the bus systems in New York and Chicago. In 1954, after acquiring the Hertz car rental business, the Omnibus Corporation sold the assets of the Fifth Avenue Coach Company to the New York City Omnibus Corporation, which was renamed Fifth Avenue Coach Lines in 1956. After a strike in 1962, the company's bus operations were taken over by the city.

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The Fifth Avenue Coach Co. started as a horse bus operation in 1885, became part of the New York Electric Vehicle Transportation Co. syndicate in 1899, and began running gasoline buses in 1906 after efforts to produce a workable battery-powered design had failed. (The holding company later became New York Transportation Co.). After 1912 a standardized design for double-deckers combined DeDion-Bouton chassis, Daimler sleeve-valve engines, and J .G. Brill open-top bodies. Engines were later purchased from the American licensee, Root & Vandervoort Engineering Co.

In 1916 the French army commandeered 25 DeDion chassis for which Fifth A venue already had bodies on order. When no manufacturer could be found to take on the task, the company purchased the necessary chassis components and built the buses in its own shops. As buses became more efficient and the city grew larger, the fleet expanded; eventually some 275 "Type A" double-deckers were constructed, and a few were also sold to other operators. The basic European design was modified over the years with storage batteries instead of acetylene for lighting, exhaust-pipe heating, illuminated destination signs, copper-tube radiators, and enclosed driver's cabs.

When the operating company's former general manager endeavored to establish a similar type of boulevard bus operation in Detroit in 1919, he found that the standard Fifth Avenue "Type A" bus was too high for that city's clearances. Starting in 1921 Fifth Avenue produced the "Type L" "Low", for a 55-passenger double-decker distinguished by an underslung drive shaft. Production of this model and the larger "Type 2L" with 64 seats reached over 300. A single-deck bus designated "Type J" was also built starting in 1923 and about 200 had been constructed (mostly for sale to other operators, especially Detroit) by the time Fifth A venue sold its bus building business to Yellow Coach in 1925. As early as 1923, the best features of the Type L had been combined with those of Chicago's Type K to provide Yellow Coach with the initial specifications for its own Type Z. Yellow, Fifth A venue, and Chicago Motor Coach were commonly owned at that time.

Fifth Avenue Coach Co. continued to build and rebuild bus bodies for its own use until 1930 and extensively rebuilt its buses in its sizable shops into the modern era.

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Series I houses photographs of the earliest coaches, including the horse-drawn omnibuses, in addition to all of the various models produced through the late 1920s. Photographs are arranged alphabetically by bus type or numerically by bus number when the type is not specified. Within each type, the items are arranged in the following order: exterior, interior, chassis and axles, and engine and parts. Interior bus views often show passengers, as well as the advertisements lining the upper walls. The series ends with miscellaneous and unidentified vehicles and automotive parts, arranged alphabetically.

Views of type J include photographs of buses produced for the Grand Rapids Railways, the Capitol Traction Company (Washington, DC), the Milwaukee Electric Railway Company, and the Kansas Electric Power Company. Views of type 7J include buses manufactured for Detroit and for the Toronto Transportation Commission, and views of type L include a coach manufactured for Baltimore. Bus 701 is shown in both New York and Chicago, with a repainted exterior. The exterior of bus 914, a cooperative project of the New York Automobile Club and the Board of Education, is covered with signs exhorting safety, such as "Hurry leads to worry," and "Why take chances? Odds are against you."

Views of miscellaneous buses include four images of an upper deck containing several couples evidently posed in romantic poses. According to a 1954 New York Times article, these so-called "spooners" favored the open-air upper decks in use from 1907 to 1936. As a result, certain strait-laced riders led a campaign against the open-air coaches as "instruments of evil." At around the same time these photographs were taken, John A. Ritchie, the head of the Fifth Avenue Coach Company in the 1920's, wrote a letter defending open-air spooning.

Series II is divided into four subseries. The subseries "Activities" contains the menu for the testimonial dinner honoring company executive Captain G. A. Green, who went off to war in his native England in 1917. Also present is a photograph of a staff Baby Contest (1922) in the office of Dr. C. Sangfree, the staff doctor. There are of portraits of Captain Green and Dr. Sangfree, as well as the managerial staff at weekly meetings in Captain Green's office. In addition, photographs of the drivers' and conductors' winter and spring uniforms (1921-1923) have survived.

Series III consists of images of the employees at work and at leisure in the various buildings in use by the company. Photographs are arranged numerically by street number and alphabetically by place name, and thereunder alphabetically by caption. The series ends with unidentified locations. The work and recreation areas of two facilities are exceptionally well documented: the company headquarters on 102nd Street and the second garage on 132nd Street. Work scenes include views of the offices, assembly floor, machine shop, and repair pits. Scenes of recreation and leisure, which emphasize the benefits and amenities provided to employees by the company, include views of the barbershop, restaurant, tailor shop, and reading room.

Series IV contains views of Manhattan dating primarily from the 1910s and 1920s, arranged numerically by street and avenue, and alphabetically by place name, according to the first-named element in the caption provided by the company. Three 1899 photographs document the construction of the Third Avenue Railway on upper Broadway. Three undated images from the 1910s offer views of Washington Square Park, the lower terminus of the Fifth Avenue line. Two photographs, also undated, show an Easter Parade along Fifth Avenue. A series of nine photographs taken the morning of 2 December 1915 depicts various Manhattan intersections from 14th Street to Times Square. Nine images dated 29 July 1921 show excavations underway along Fifth Avenue from 14th Street to 86th Street.

Series V is divided into two subseries. Within each subseries, items are arranged alphabetically by caption. The first subseries contains images of employees adjusting, installing, operating, or assembling various vehicles and automotive parts. The second is a series of staged, didactic photographs depicting correct and incorrect practices for drivers and conductors. Examples of improper behaviors include smoking, reading the newspaper, miscalculating distances, stopping short, and leaving the bus unprotected. Images of model conduct show the proper way to make turns, usher passengers to the upper deck, and warn passengers before going under elevated structures.

Housed in Series VI are images related to the company's public relations endeavors during World War I. Present are photographs of the buses loaned to the American Red Cross in 1917, and to the Scotch Kilties for a recruiting tour that same year. One photograph depicts volunteers from the Woman's Motor Corps of America decorating the exterior of a bus, while another shows the same bus at the Fourth Liberty Loan Demonstration.

Series VII contains the following subseries: Types J and L, Graphs, and Miscellaneous. The images in the first subseries are photographs of sectional diagrams of types J and L coaches and schematic drawings of their component parts. The curves plotted along the graphs in the second subseries record such variables as the speed, engine performance, and acceleration of various types of coaches.

Series IX is divided into six subseries. Within each subseries, the items are arranged in an approximate chronological fashion. The cyanotypes primarily document the 146th Street station house and the 9th Avenue and 54th Street car house from 1897 to 1910. The small format bus views contain some replicas of the mounted images, as well as several supplementary views from the 1920s, including seven additional photographs of Bus 914 in front of City Hall on 23 December 1926. Later views from the 1930s onward include the buses of the Fifth Avenue Coach Lines. The earliest 8 x 10 bus views duplicate several of the mounted images, though the bulk of the images depict coaches from the 1930s through the 1960s. Many of the photographs from the 1930s and 40s represent the buses of the Madison Avenue Coach Lines, the Eighth Avenue Coach Lines, the Chicago Motor Coach Lines, and the New York City Omnibus Corporation, all under common control by 1936. The latest photographs from the 1960s depict coaches from the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority, the entity that took control of the Fifth Avenue Coach Lines and its affiliates in 1962. Photographs of employees include two 1946 portraits of Operator Norman Peer, Badge 841, and two 1950s group snapshots of employees in the new locker room. Other views from the 1950s and 60s consist of executives giving speeches, attending at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and celebrating at a banquet.

Series X, Albums and Scrapbooks, shows the ways in which this photographic archive was used for public relations and advertising purposes by the Fifth Avenue Coach Company in the 1910s and 20s. The large scrapbook contains items dated from 1911 to 1922 arranged with an internal alphabetical index supplied by its creator. It houses a variety of types of materials, including maps, route guides, fare schedules, passes, advertisements, advertising contracts, announcements, employee bulletins, public pamphlets, annual reports, letters to stockholders, and invitations to company events. It also contains the March 1917 and January-February 1922 issues of Bus Lines, the in-house newsletter published by the company for its employees, and the 1917 booklet Motor Bus Relief for New York's Transit Needs, which explained and supported the company's application to the city for new routes. Pamphlets for employees promoting courtesy, safety, and civility complement the contemporary photographs of the type A buses with civility signs in Series I and Series IV.

The March 1917 issue of Bus Lines reproduces an image from Series V, "Cutting Rubber from Tires," to illustrate an article entitled "Paddy's Scheme and the Lesson it Teaches," about an employee's cost-saving suggestion to remove and sell the rubber from old tires. An October 1917 advertisement in British Empire Rally contains the image of the Scotch Kilties' recruiting tour, and a company postcard pictures the bus camouflaged by the Women's War Work Effort.

The advertisements, which are clipped from a number of different publications and are directed either at riders, potential advertisers, or potential purchasers of coaches, make liberal use of the exterior and interior views of coaches found in Series I. In most cases, the price the company paid for each ad is penciled at the top.

Everybody's Motor Car, the photographs and clippings album, was most likely compiled in the late 1910s. It contains photographs with extensive typed and handwritten captions that promote a positive image of the company, touting its fine facilities and the excellent construction of its buses, the high rates of employee and customer satisfaction, its impressive safety record, and its patriotic endeavors in wartime. It is divided into the following sections: Company History, The Company and Its Employees, and The Company and the Public. The photographs in this album are for the most part duplicates of items found in Series I, Series III, and Series VI, picturing coaches, employees at work and at leisure, and wartime activities. Together with the photographs are printed materials, including the February 1917 issue of Bus Lines, the Fifth Avenue Coach Association Membership Book, an instruction book for employees, another copy of Motor Bus Relief for New York's Transit Needs, a Central Park Guide, maps, and advertisements clipped from other publications.

The photographs in the small album feature several views from the 1920s of the interior, exterior, chassis, and engine parts of types J, L, and 2L coaches, as well as curves charting their horse power, engine performance, and speed. The majority of these images are duplicates of items found in Series I and VII. Though it contains no captions, this album may have been used to visually demonstrate the features and craftsmanship of these particular coaches to potential purchasers.

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New York City Transit has a preserved fleet of vintage buses that have been restored by the Transit Authority and stored at various bus depots in the city, including Jackie Gleason and Ulmer Park Depots in Brooklyn.  These buses are showcased at NYCT Bus Roadeos and at the Annual Bus Festival in Downtown Brooklyn.  Various models include the "Queen Anne," a Fifth Avenue Coach Model A double-decker bus run by Fifth Avenue Coach Company, the GM "Blitz" Rebuilds, and the famous Ralph Kramden bus that was shown in "The Honeymooners."

Fifth Avenue Coach Company built and operated a number of Model "A" luxury double-decker buses that were used on Fifth Avenue Coach routes, including today's M4 and M5 routes.

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Local Bus Companies of Manhattan by Joe Brennan

This paper is a brief history of the private companies that operated local bus services in Manhattan between the end of the streetcar era and the start of "public" operation. Principal sources: Public Service Commission annual reports, Moody's investmenet manuals.

The Fifth Avenue system, which ultimately became MABSTOA, was started in 1886 with a horse omnibus line from 89th St via Fifth Avenue and West Broadway to Bleecker Street. Electric buses were used from about 1898 and later of course gasoline and diesel buses. It was the only motor bus company in the city until 1916. Fifth Avenue was the only major street in Manhattan that never had a street railway, because the politically connected residents prevented it, and the bus line charged twice the fare of street railways as a class distinction.

Operating companies of the Fifth Ave bus system were "Fifth Avenue Transportation Company (Limited)" 1885-1895, foreclosed, then "Fifth Avenue Coach Company" 1897-1954. The holding companies, the real power, were quite a tangle, and note the incorporations in different states. "New York Electrical Vehicle Transportation Company" (inc NJ) 1899-1936 took control in 1899, and changed its name to "New York Transportation Company" 1902. NYT was itself controlled as of 1922 by "Fifth Avenue Bus Securities Corporation" (inc DE) 1922-1936. That was in turn controlled by "The Omnibus Corporation" 1923-present (inc DE), which was named "Chicago Motor Coach Corporation" up to 1924 and named "The Hertz Corporation" since 1954 (yes, the automobile rental company). It came to light many years later that the Omnibus Corp was controlled by General Motors interests. This takes us to 1954.

The larger of the two Manhattan streetcar systems was the Metropolitan Street Railway system, approximately 1893-1911, which was a bit of a house of cards that broke up in part after bankruptcy in 1908. The core company became the New York Railways system, which passed to "New York Railways Corporation" 1925-1936, which was controlled by "Fifth Avenue Coach Company" (and therefore ultimately by General Motors). NYR acquired control of "Manhattan Surface Coach Company" 1925-unknown, named "New York City Omnibus Corporation" from 1930 to 1956. The streetcar lines were converted to bus in 1936, when NYR was liquidated and control of NYCO passed to Fifth Ave Coach and The Omnibus Corp. So as of 1936 the Fifth Ave and NYC Omnibus systems were under common control.

"Madison Avenue Coach Company, Incorporated" 1933-1951 operated bus service over the former New-York and Harlaem Rail-Road streetcar line after it was abandoned in 1935. It was controlled by NYR 1933-1936, then by NYCO.

"Eighth Avenue Coach Corporation" 1935-1951 operated bus service over the former Eighth and Ninth Avenues Railway after it was abandoned in 1935. It was controlled by NYR and Fifth Ave Coach 1935-1936 and then by NYCO.

"Green Bus Lines, Incorporated" 1925-present was formed by a group of bus drivers to consolidate former jitney services authorized by the City. It operated bus lines in Manhattan only 1933-1936, when its Manhattan franchises were turned over to NYC Omnibus in exchange for routes in Queens that it still operates-- a strange arrangement!

"Hamilton Bus Corporation" 1929-1935 operated one line 1933-1935, sold to "Triangle Bus Corporation" 1930-1942, which sold the route to NYC Omnibus.

The other major Manhattan streetcar system was the Third Avenue Railroad or Railway (at different times) System, TARS, which also ran nearly all streetcar and bus lines in the Bronx and many lines in Westchester County. TARS established "Surface Transportation Corporation of New York" 1924-1956 to operate bus feeder lines and eventually used the company to operate buses over its former streetcar lines, which survived longer than the NYR system, until 1948. ST was controlled until 1942 by "Union Railway Company of New York City" 1892-1942, the Bronx streetcar operator, which was controlled by "Third Avenue Railway Company" 1910-1970?; in 1942 TAR changed its name to "Third Avenue Transit Corporation" and took direct control of Surface Transit.

In 1954, New York City Omnibus Corp and Third Ave Transit Corp formed a subsidiary owned 66% by NYCO and 33% by TAT, named "New York Management Ownership Corporation", renamed "Gray Line Motor Tours, Incorporated" in 1955, and renamed "Gray Line Corporation" in 1962. The Omnibus Corp then got out of the bus business by selling Fifth Ave Coach and its part interest in NYCO to NYMO. So, NYCO owned 66% of NYMO, which owned about 33% of NYCO. But these companies all must have been the same group of people, and clearly Third Ave Transit was now pooling its interests with the NYCO group.

In 1956, NYCO bought out Third Ave Transit Corp and had Surface Transportation sell its routes to NYCO. For some reason, it then dissolved Surface Transit and changed Third Ave Transit Corp's name to "Surface Transit, Incorporated", which owned real estate and possibly buses. NYCO itself, strangely, changed its name to "Fifth Avenue Coach Lines, Incorporated", even though it now operated a large system in Manhattan and the Bronx. As Fifth Ave Coach Lines, this company operated until 1962, when, following a strike, the City condemned its bus operations, which were taken over by a new public corporation, "Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority", which still operates them.

Although this took Fifth Ave Coach Lines out of the bus business in Manhattan and most of the Bronx, it still owned Westchester Street Transportation Co, an old TARS property that operated bus lines in Westchester county until 1969 sales to Liberty Coaches, Inc and to Bus Associates, Inc.

Meanwhile, Fifth Ave Coach Lines had become heavily involved in stock investing, and that part of the business was not taken by the City. The company continued in business as an investment company until it was nailed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1967 for illegal business practices, not registering as an investment company. It and Gray Line Corp went into receivership. This was not the end. FACL registered with the SEC in 1968, got its final condemnation award for the bus lines in 1970, and emerged from receivership in 1971. In 1973 it changed its name to "South Bay Corporation" and shortly after that it became privately held (stock not publicly traded).

Loose ends: What ever happened to the South Bay Corporation? What is the relation of these companies to the Gray Line that runs tour buses in Manhattan today? What's the story with Green Bus Lines, which still has some sweetheart relationship with the City's franchise bureau? Will I sleep with the fishes if I pry into this? :-)

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Private companies also operated the city's earliest motor buses. The Fifth Avenue Coach Company began passenger service between Washington Square and 90th Street with gasoline-powered buses and open-top double-deckers on July 13, 1907.

In 1885, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company began servicing the residents of Fifth Avenue with horse-drawn coaches, which ran from East 90th Street to Washington Square. In 1907, horses were replaced with double-decker motorized buses, which became a trademark of the company. The 1931 model in Abbott's photograph gave way in the late 1930s to a streamlined moderne design. Entering and leaving through the Washington Arch, buses turned around and headed back up Fifth Avenue, which until 1966 was a two-way street. Abbott depicted the double-decker bus at the end of the line between runs.

In the 1950s, the privately owned company was taken over by the city's transit system, and when the park was redesigned in 1966, buses were rerouted outside the park's confines.

This double-decked bus was built by the Fifth Avenue Coach Company and served Fifth Avenue and 72nd St in Manhattan from 1917-1930.

Yellow Coach Company Model 735 served Fifth Avenue in Manhattan between 1938 and 1953

Fifth Avenue Coach Company Collection - New York Historical Society

Fifth Avenue Coach Company Collection - New York Historical Society

Ed Strauss & Karen Strauss - The Bus World Encyclopedia of Buses

G.N. Georgano & G. Marshall Naul - The Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles

Albert Mroz - Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Trucks & Commercial Vehicles

Donald F. Wood - American Buses

Denis Miller - The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trucks and Buses

Susan Meikle Mandell - A Historical Survey of Transit Buses in the United States

David Jacobs - American Buses, Greyhound, Trailways and Urban Transportation

William A. Luke & Linda L. Metler - Highway Buses of the 20th Century: A Photo Gallery 

William A. Luke & Brian Grams - Buses of Motorcoach Industries 1932-2000 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Greyhound Buses 1914-2000 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Prevost Buses 1924-2002 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Flxible Intercity Buses 1924-1970 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Buses of ACF Photo Archive (including ACF-Brill & CCF-Brill)

William A. Luke - Trailways Buses 1936-2001 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Fageol & Twin Coach Buses 1922-1956 Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Yellow Coach Buses 1923 Through 1943: Photo Archive

William A. Luke - Trolley Buses: 1913 Through 2001 Photo Archive

Harvey Eckart - Mack Buses: 1900 Through 1960 Photo Archive

Brian Grams & Andrew Gold - GM Intercity Coaches 1944-1980 Photo Archive

Robert R. Ebert  - Flxible: A History of the Bus and the Company

John McKane - Flxible Transit Buses: 1953 Through 1995 Photo Archive

Bill Vossler - Cars, Trucks and Buses Made by Tractor Companies

Lyndon W Rowe - Municipal buses of the 1960s

Edward S. Kaminsky - American Car & Foundry Company 1899-1999

Dylan Frautschi - Greyhound in Postcards: Buses, Depots and Post Houses