"EL," SECOND AND THIRD AVENUE LINES
Bowery and Division Streets
APRIL 24, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 111

"El," Second and Third Avenue Lines, variant image 1

Abbott took three views at the intersection of the Second and Third Avenue Els at Division Street and the Bowery, just north of Chatham Square. Facing north, she photographed the Second Avenue line on Division Street and the Third Avenue line on the Bowery (variant 1); she then turned west, looking across the tracks toward Doyers Street (variant 2). Of the three compositions, Abbott chose the most dynamic: she discarded a horizontal composition with tracks running parallel to the picture plane and a textbook study of one-point perspective in favor of the view of curving tracks down Division Street.

"El," Second and Third Avenue Lines, variant image 2

New York was the first city to develop elevated railways, which opened in the 1870s, and by Abbott's day had become landmarks. Abbott avoided the most commonly depicted stretch of the El at Chatham Square, famous for its rush hour crowds and serpentine bend around the towering Municipal Building. Instead, she walked a block north, where this expansive intersection was covered with the spiderweb shadows of the train tracks overhead. The feeling of menace that the overarching mechanical system suggests was, according to Abbott, quite real. To expose these negatives, she stood on a tiny island in the middle of the street, dodging traffic. She later recalled that "this was one of the occasions when it was downright dangerous to document New York." (O'Neal, 97).

The elevated trains stayed in service long after the subway system was begun in 1904, and property owners along the train lines protested the El's persistence once alternative mass transit was available. Two years after Abbott's photograph, the Sixth Avenue El came down, followed by the Second Avenue El in 1942 and the Third Avenue El in 1955.

Return to the Lower East Side