NEW YORK: Reform in Manhattan

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For 60 years elevated trains kept Manhattan's Sixth Avenue in shadow and a perpetual uproar. Early wood-burning locomotives dumped cinders down the necks of people on the street below; later electric cars went overhead with a clattering roar like garbage cans rolling down endless flights of stairs. In the shadow of the "El" taxis wove wildly among pillars, and in the murky streets blocks of laundries, pastrami shops, employment agencies, dingy bars and doubtful bookshops grew like mushrooms.

Seven years ago the "El" was torn down and replaced by a decently buried subway. Then the hard sunlight really showed up Sixth Avenue's tawdriness, made its occasional big stores and skyscrapers look prissy.

Merchants and landowners thought something ought to be done about Sixth Avenue. So, last week, in one of his spasmodic attacks of grandiloquence, did hen-shaped Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Hurriedly he sent an emergency message to the City Council. Members read it with bulging eyes, debated wildly, were unable to call back the moving finger of reform. That evening Manhattan discovered that Sixth Avenue had been renamed "Avenue of the Americas" (pronounced Avunya Damurrikuz).