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Posted by
W.B.
on Mon Feb 24 19:29:20 2025
February 24, 1938 - The Book of Deaths
Manhattan, New York
New York City Omnibus Corporation
Madison Avenue Coach Company, Inc.
Eighth Avenue Coach Corporation
(and predecessors)
Hugh J. Sheeran, the president of New York City Omnibus and its Madison Avenue Coach and Eighth Avenue Coach subsidiaries, and before that the head of New York Railways Corporation, dies at age 53 from coronary thrombosis at the Fifth Avenue Hospital. It was he who had overseen the massive 1935-36 conversions of New York Railways' streetcar network to bus service, which had been complicated by various legal, financial and operational difficulties along the way; and built New York City Omnibus into the largest bus network in Manhattan up to that point. At his death, he was also a director of the parent Omnibus Corporation, and was on the advisory committee on transportation for the coming 1939-40 New York World's Fair.
A graduate of St. Ann's Academy for Boys, Mr. Sheeran's career had begun with the Metropolitan Street Railway in 1900 as a clerk, and then moved up the ranks until he was named to an executive position in the office of Metropolitan's vice president and general manager Oren Root. His responsibilities would be expanded in the 1907-11 period when Metropolitan was in receivership, then upon reorganization as New York Railways Company in 1912 he was an assistant in the office of vice president and general manager Frank Hedley (of Interborough Rapid Transit fame). After New York Railways' 1919 bankruptcy, Mr. Sheeran was appointed secretary to the company's receiver, Job E. Hedges, then assumed the position of receiver himself on July 24, 1924. Upon the firm's 1925 reorganization as New York Railways Corporation (effective May 1), he became its president. In 1926, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company acquired a controlling interest in New York Railways, and in April 1933 Mr. Sheeran and FACCo's then-president, Frederic T. Wood, offered an invitation (which was accepted) to representatives of various commercial interests in the city to serve on the board of directors of both companies.
In the wake of Mr. Sheeran's death, chairman John A. Ritchie will serve as interim president of NYCO, MACCo and EACCo, until on May 17, 1939 John E. McCarthy (recently named president of FACCo) is elected president and director of the three entities.
(Sources: "Hugh J. Sheeran Dead; Head of Bus Lines," The New York Times, February 25, 1938; "Annual Report to the Stockholders, For the Year Ended December 31, 1937," New York City Omnibus Corporation, issued 1938; "Shift Made in Officers Of the Omnibus Group," The New York Times, May 18, 1939.)
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