BusTalk

[W.B. Fishbowl]

Hugh J. Sheeran, president of New York City Omnibus Corporation and its subsidiaries Madison Avenue Coach Company, Inc. and Eighth Avenue Coach Corporation, and before that the head of New York Railways Corporation, dies from a coronary thrombosis at age 53. He oversaw the massive conversion of New York Railways' streetcar network, in 1935-36, to bus service, which was complicated by various legal, financial and operational difficulties along the way; and had built NYC Omnibus into the largest bus network in Manhattan up to that point. At his death, he was also a director of 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 began in 1900 with the Metropolitan Street Railway as a clerk. Over time, he moved up in the ranks to the point where he was in an executive position in the office of Metropolitan's vice president and general manager, Oren Root, Jr. During Metropolitan's 1907-11 period in receivership, his responsibilities increased, and when New York Railways Company assumed stewardship of the city's streetcar network in 1912 he was an assistant in the office of vice president and general manager Frank Hedley (of Interborough Rapid Transit Fame). After the original New York Railways fell into bankruptcy in 1919, Mr. Sheeran had become secretary to the company's receiver, Job E. Hedges, then became receiver himself on July 24, 1924. Upon the firm's reorganization as New York Railways Corporation effective May 1, 1925, he became president of the new entity. In 1926, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company acquired a controlling interest in New York Railways, and in 1933 Mr. Sheeran and Fifth Avenue Coach's then-president, Frederic T. Wood, extended an invitation (which was accepted) to representatives of the city's various commercial interests to serve on the board of directors of both companies.

In the wake of Mr. Sheeran's death, Chairman of the Board John A. Ritchie steps in as interim president of NYCO, MACCo and EACCo, until in 1939 John E. McCarthy, only recently named president of FACCo, is elected president and director of the other three entities.

[N4 Jamaica]

Many thanks for the reference to Hugh J. Sheeran and the "commercial boys' school" (as I would call it) that is now Archbishop Molloy High School in Briarwood. It is no accident that it was near the church of St. Jean Baptiste on Lex. One pattern of survival in the history of New York Catholic schools is that the language of instruction rapidly switched to English.
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In the early and mid 20th century, high schools of commerce led to successful careers. The women may have hit a glass ceiling, but men with bookkeeping and actuarial skills could rise to live in New Rochelle and belong to clubs, as Sheeran did.