The New York Railways Company operated street railways in Manhattan, New York City, United States between 1911 and 1925. The company went into receivership in 1919 and control was passed to the New York Railways Corporation in 1925 after which all of its remaining lines were replaced with bus routes.
The New York Railways Company was incorporated December 30, 1911 and operated the following lines on or after 1911.
The Eighth Avenue Railroad and Ninth Avenue Railroad were split in July and on October 1, and the New York and Harlem Railroad (City Line) lease was canceled on February 1, 1920. During receivership, the process of abandoning unprofitable lines continued, as the last four storage battery lines - the Avenue C Line, Spring and Delancey Streets Line, Madison Street Line, and Sixth Avenue Ferry Line - were discontinued on September 21, 1919.
Bus routes managed by the city, soon known as Mayor John Hylan's "emergency bus lines", replaced the rail lines. The Spring and Delancey Streets Line was soon ordered resumed by the courts, and operated until 1931.
New York Railways Company entered receivership on March 20, 1919 after an application for a fare increase was denied.
Operation was taken over by the New York Railways Corporation on May 1, 1925.
The first streetcars in Manhattan were the horse cars of the New York and Harlem Railroad, which began operations on Bowery on November 26, 1832. By the end of 1865, Manhattan had eleven north-south lines on most of the major avenues, and several crosstown lines, operated by twelve companies. This number had increased to about twenty companies by 1886, with only two leases in effect at the time: the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street Railroad to the Third Avenue Railroad (1870) and the Bleecker Street and Fulton Ferry Railroad to the Twenty-third Street Railway (1876).