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Author
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Topic: 'Third Avenue El.'
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 03-05-2007 07:22 AM
Mark, I can see Little Falls, it's on the Montclair-Boonton line, sort of North of Newark, isn't it.
Where was the Northern terminus of the Third Avenue line? I hadn't realised that it went into the Bronx. I believe that all of the manhattan elevated lines converged at South Ferry, close to, and possiby even connected to, the Battery Maritime Building.
There seem to be a lot of very old looking swing and lift bridges around New York and New Jersey, like those that you pass over, and others that you pass next to, on PATH, between Journal Square and Newark. Do any of these still open, and if not, when were they last worked?
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 03-05-2007 08:03 AM
It all began in those far-off days of horse-drawn carriages and coaches, gaslight lamps and cobblestone streets, top hats and parasols. Rapid Transit needed to alleviate the congested streets of Manhattan. One solution adopted by the city was the construction of overhead railways. Eventually four elevated lines were built covering the East and West sides of the island. The Second, Third, Sixth and Ninth Avenue elevated lines were born. Beginning with a single track up Ninth Avenue in 1868 all the lines eventually became triple track lines by 1916; the middle track for express trains.
The Third Avenue Line opened August 26, 1878 running up the avenue, built in stages till it reached into the Bronx in 1886. After decades of service the els were considered obsolete and demolition began in favor of subways. The section of the Third Avenue from Chatham Sq., near City Hall to just below 149th Street in the Bronx was torn down beginning May 12, 1955. The final segment in the Bronx, from 149th to Gun Hill Road finally met its demise on April 29th 1973. The end of an era that had lasted almost one hundred years.
These dates have special meaning for me. From its heyday to its inevitable ending, the Third Avenue El served the city and the borough of the Bronx with dependable; vital transportation. It ran through the spine of the Bronx; Mott Haven, The Hub, Melrose, Morrisania, Bathgate, Tremont, Belmont, Fordham, up Webster Ave. through Bedford Park to its terminus at Gun Hill Road. It was a workhorse carrying people to and from work, recreation and other daily activities, opening neighborhoods to commerce and development. It was a link to our glorious past.
I was always fascinated by the elevated railway. I even constructed a scale model using my Erector Set and Tinker Toys, running my Lionel Trains over a propped-up version of the line! With an imaginary third-rail I'd operate those trains like the regular engineer, stopping at stations to pick up passengers. I often wondered how a five-car train could be supported by such an insubstantial-looking structure. It appeared to be a skeleton laid bare resting upon thin girders. It must be a deception of engineering know-how I thought. As a boy I took many trips on the el, entering the 183rd Street station, just a short walk from my apartment building on 184th Street and Washington Avenue. I accompanied my parents on those occasions. One day in 1956 I decided to venture on my own.
I had no particular destination, but paid my fare of 15 cents and headed right for the first car to stand beside the operator's cabin. This was a five- car train with the Low V type cars accommodating a center door. I would stare intently out the front door window as the train made its way downtown. I felt the freedom and excitement of zipping along over the streets. I was transfixed; absorbing all the sights along the route.... the stone and brick canyons, the noise echoing off the buildings. I liken it now to a description I read by William Dean Howell in his "Hazard of New Fortune" (1890). "...fleeting intimacy you formed with people in the second-and-third floor interiors." He was referring to the apartment windows where one could glimpse a "fleeting" moment as you passed. Perhaps you would see someone sitting at a kitchen table or walking through the living room or maybe leaning out the window watching the train pass by. This was a connection. You could share a moment of their lives.
When I reached 149th Street which was the last stop, I simply took the train back up the line and my adventure continued. The stations at Tremont and Fordham were once express stops having double wooden platforms. These platforms were exposed with no railings. It seems to me that any sudden gust of wind or a false step would send a person dashing to the tracks! At nine years old my imaginary fears were real enough. As we continued uptown we passed the Sears Roebuck Tower on the left and curved up Webster passed Fordham University on the right continuing on to see French Charlie's Field and the Botanical Gardens off to the right near 204th Street. As the trip ended we turned at a right angle over the Bronx River Parkway to the terminus at Gun Hill Road. Making the connection to the White Plains Road Line. At one time in the distant past the Third Ave El shared the same tracks with the White Plains Road line and continued up to the last stop at 241st Street. But this was the end of the line. After a short while the train began its run downtown again to 183rd Street and home.
My parents had no idea of my whereabouts or what I was up to. My father worked the night shift at Bond Bread and slept during the day. My mother worked at Joe Vin Blouse Company on 187th Street in Belmont. When she got home around 4 pm and didn't find me in the apartment, she naturally woke up my father. He thought I was playing in the street below. Well, I must have timed it perfectly because it was just about this time I walked through the front door and saved the local police precinct from a wild goose chase! I got more than just a bawling-out from my parents, but it still didn't deter me from riding my beloved train. I had many more future escapades alone and with friends.
A classmate of mine lived on the corner of 183rd Street and Third Avenue in a second floor apartment facing the el. You could reach out and touch the catwalk from his kitchen window. I was in his house many times and neither he nor his family ever complained of the noise or thunderous vibrations as the trains continuously rumbled past. The trains always came to a screeching halt because the station was at this corner. You have to imagine what it was like. Take that imaginary trip on the elevated. It may have been a relic even in its day, but the nostalgia perks up every time it comes to mind. Like some aging matron, it creaked and groaned with the aches and pains of old age. Late in the 1960's the city was forced to place governors on the wheels of all the trains on the Third Ave el to regulate the speed. I suppose the city fathers were afraid the structure would collapse! One engineering marvel I recall was during the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway in the 50's and early 60's it was necessary to raise the el above this elevated highway to accommodate the height of the tractor- trailers. It was truly amazing to see the construction workers slowly create a steel trellis without interrupting service. But the end was coming, plain as day, and it was just as amazing to see the swift razing of the el.
Why all the fuss over what many people consider a rickety, noisy, grimy eyesore? To my mind it was part of our heritage, our history. The el was a national treasure; a magnificent feat of engineering and design. The el was part of the neighborhood, like arteries pumping the life-blood of people on the move. Even with its rattles and screeches the elevated had special charm, from its gingerbread style stations and stain glass windows to its quaint pot-bellied stoves and wooden turnstiles. The skeletal structure cast its mysterious shadows; a criss-cross, spider web pattern to the cobblestone street below. Mysterious indeed; dark and menacing! It was complemented by the buildings along the route distinctive in their appearance with brick and ornate masonry, fire escapes, signs on the stores, water tanks on the roofs, and of course the cast-iron Bishop's crooks lampposts lining the sidewalks. The atmosphere was complete. Think of a detective yarn or a dark, brooding plot from a film noir and the stage is set. It is a street scene with character, with a personality all its own; a Bronx scene. It is gone, lost from us through the cruel fates of time. But it is preserved in memory, film, photography, prints and drawings. The elevated, once a symbol of progress, has passed into history.
During the 1940's there was a Bronx Community protest with a flyer that tried to arouse opposition to the second Avenue el's demolition. The razing of that line would have put extra burdens on the Third Avenue Line.
DON'T CRAB NEXT MONTH WHEN TRAVEL DOWNTOWN BECOMES UNBEARABLE
...ACT NOW ATTEND MASS MEETING PROTESTING PROPOSED DEMOLITION OF SECOND AVENUE AND NINTH AVENUE ELS AT MORRIS HIGH SCHOOL
--YOU MUST DO YOUR SHARE!
(Source: Fallen Transit: The Loss of Rapid Transit
On New York's Second Avenue by Alexander Nobler Cohen..
The Third Rail Online (www.3drail.com) )
This availed no one and we all know the fate of the Second and Ninth Avenue els. It just took a little longer for the destruction of the Third Avenue Line. There had been another attempt by the Bronx Chamber of Commerce and other organizations to try and block the demolition, but it did not have the support of civic organizations and the property owners. Many thought the el was an urban blight; an unpleasant nuisance to be torn down for what they thought would be revitalization and redevelopment of the corridor. The supporters for keeping the el failed to convince city officials of the need to preserve it. Instead of revitalization, the neighborhoods declined and became rife with crime, deterioration and poverty. It is only now that the area is coming back to economic and social health.
That stretch of the Third Avenue El, the last remnant, was finally dismantled and replaced not with a subway, but with the Bx55x Bus. And so it was that fateful day April 29th 1973, the last train made its run and one more vestige of Old New York faded away and another link to our past forever destroyed.
Gregory J. Christiano
gregoryc@myrecollection.com
Comments or questions, share your own recollections?
info@myrecollection.com
©2002 MyRecollection.com. and Gregory J. Christiano
Sunday, October 13, 2002
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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 03-05-2007 08:35 AM
Yep, that's where we are. I live about a half a mile from the Great Notch station on the Montclair-Boonton line. As of a few years ago, if you board the train (or transfer) in Montclair you can get direct service into NYC Penn Station, which saves having to stop and get the PATH train at Newark Penn. It's a much nicer and faster commute, as the PATH line has been pretty erratic of late due to reconstruction of the World Trade Center station. On the other hand, Newark Penn is a beautiful old station with a great commuter bar. ![[beer]](graemlins/beer.gif) Since I work on the very west side of Manhattan, at 57th Street and 11th Avenue, I usually drive to work over the George Washington Bridge and down the Westside Highway.
At it's longest run, the Third Avenue El ran into the at least to the Williamsburg section of the Bronx and I belive (but don't hold me to this) that the northern-most end-of-the-line station was at Gun Hill Road.
Pretty much all of the bridges over the Harlem River are still operational, be they swinging (like the Third Avenue, the Macomb Dam, the University Heights and the Spuyten Duyvil) or lifting (like the Broadway Bridge). Most of these have had their mechinisms either replaced or refurbished within the last thirty years or so. The Spuyten Duyvil was stuck "open" for a long time after it got rammed by a Circle Line boat in the early eighties. Finally, about 15 years ago, Amtrak got it swinging again and they now share it with the Metro North line.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 03-05-2007 08:56 AM
Bob,
So how far is it from the crossing of the Harlem River to Gun Hill Road? Were there ever plans to extend the line beyond there. The 'Third Avenue El' film runs on video at the New York Transit Museum, at the old Court Street Station, in Brooklyn, but without the music. I didn't see it there until after I'd seen it at the archive.org site. It's a pity they don't have a better copy of it. The museum also have some of the stained glass and one of the cast iron stoves, as seen in the film. I don't think they have any of the Manhattan Elevated cars, but they do have some rather similar ones, from Brooklyn.
The whole system looks rather like the Liverpool Overhead Railway, the 'Docker's Umbrella' in Liverpool, England. It closed in 1956, partly due to corrosion of the steel structure by smoke and steam from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board railway which ran beneath it. I read somewhere that the contract for the demolition of it was signed on the very day that I was born. There are some pictures here , though the LOR part of the site seems to be unavailable at the moment, which is unusual.
Last year I went to somewhere in the Bronx, Pelham Bay Park I think, to catch the bus to City Island, and the steel structure outside the station, by the bus stop, looked very similar.
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 03-06-2007 05:37 PM
The first time I remember riding the Third Avenue El with destination in mind was the day I enlisted in the U.S.Army in 1948, when I rode from mid-town to South Ferry to be sworn in.
But I rode it earlier and later times for fun, especially when the demolition date was announced, when I rode in the first car and between cars, taking still photos, which I printed and selenium toned to get a moody, nostalgic effect. (Where are those prints now?)
I remember the nickel (5 cent) fare and the wooden cars painted with red lead, like barns. The tracks swerved into the Chatham Square stop, where below a newsreel grind house cinema ran 24/7.
Somehow, I never rode north to the Bronx.
Those favoring demolition claimed opening 3rd Avenue to light and air would reduce crime and noise polution and bring business and investment to the avenue. It did, many years later, when big real-estate firms built office buildings and upscale apartment buildings where there had been working class tenements, small stores and pawn shops. By then the former residents had left or died off, but the memories of the El remain.
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