Named after West 50th Street, where it meets Eighth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.
50th Street is one of the numbered cross streets of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811. It is an ordinary one, 60 feet wide with about 200 feet between neighbouring streets; only fifteen were made 100 feet wide. From 1925 to 1968 the third Madison Square Garden stood beside the station, on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets.