GAS TANK AND QUEENSBORO BRIDGE
East 62nd Street and York Avenue
OCTOBER 9, 1935. ABBOTT FILE 9

First Avenue and Esat 70th Street, discraded image

The electrification of New York after 1900 did not diminish the demand for gas as the city's primary fuel source. Huge gas tanks, called holders, were scattered along the outer edges of Manhattan. The tank in Abbott's photograph was one of a group of three, each filling a city block and rising 200 feet in the air. Behind the tank at 59th Street was the Queensboro Bridge, which spanned the East River and Welfare Island to Astoria, Queens.

Abbott photographed the tank from the northeast corner of 63rd Street, looking southwest from a slightly elevated position. By choosing a horizontal format, allowing the walls of the tank to converge, and cutting off its top at the upper edge of the frame, she created the impression that the tank was bursting from its space.

These tanks were situated in the southern section of Yorkville, a working-class neighborhood of German, Eastern European, and Irish immigrants. To the north was Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the newly completed New York Hospital and Cornell University Medical College, a 15-building complex modeled on the Palace of the Popes at Avignon. The day before she photographed the gas tanks, Abbott depicted the tower of New York Hospital rising over the tenements on East 70th Street. She later discarded the image from the project.

The gas tank at York Avenue and 62nd Street was replaced with a 19-story apartment building in the 1960s.

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