TheSeventh Avenue Line is a surfacepublic transit line inManhattan,New York City,United States, connectingLower Manhattan withCentral Park alongSeventh Avenue. Once astreetcar line, it is now part of the southbound direction of theM10 andM20bus routes.

TheBroadway and Seventh Avenue Railroad was chartered by theNew York State Legislature in April 1860; the authorized system consisted of two main lines - the Seventh Avenue Line andBroadway Line - connectingBroadway nearCity Hall with Central Park. The Seventh Avenue Line began at Seventh Avenue and59th Street and proceeded in a general southerly direction through Seventh Avenue,Greenwich Avenue,Eighth Street,MacDougal Street,Fourth Street,Thompson Street,Canal Street, andWest Broadway, with aone-way pair of single tracks in West Broadway andBarclay Street in one direction andChambers Street andChurch Street in the other, and ending in a double track on the block of Barclay Street between Church Street and Broadway. Branches along three other streets -Broome Street,Duane Street, andPark Place - to Broadway were also authorized, and the Broadway Line shared the route north ofTimes Square and south of Barclay Street (in one direction on Church Street) and Canal Street (in the other direction on West Broadway).^[1]

The company was incorporated on May 26, 1864,^[2] and opened the Seventh Avenue Line by the end of 1865.^[3]

An 1866 law required the company to replace its double track inFourth and Thompson Streets with aone-way pair, the other direction usingThird andSullivan Streets between MacDougal and Canal Streets.^[4] Since the block of MacDougal Street between Third and Fourth Streets was already used northbound by theBleecker Street and Fulton Ferry Railroad'sBleecker Street Line, and the Seventh Avenue cars used that track viatrackage rights, a law was passed in 1867 requiring the Seventh Avenue cars to travel in the same direction, with northbound cars in Sullivan Street, a block west of southbound cars in Thompson Street.^[2]

• Streetcar lines in Manhattan