THIRD AVENUE CAR BARNS
Third Avenue and 65th Street
OCTOBER 8, 1936. ABBOTT FILE 171

Third Avenue Car Barns, variant image

Abbott's photograph shows the end of a block-long shed that stored the electric trolley cars of the Third Avenue Railway. Adorned with the mansard roofs, towers, and elaborate windows of the French Second Empire style, this utilitarian structure was designed in 1896 by Henry J. Hardenbergh, the architect of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (1897) and the Plaza Hotel (1907). By 1900, this shed and the city's other car barns housed hundreds of streetcars, but by 1936, the shed was the city's last, housing a hundred cars.

Standing on the second floor of the building at the southwest corner of Third Avenue and 65th Street, Abbott juxtaposed the barn with the tracks of the Third Avenue Elevated. In a variant image made with a shorter lens, she showed the entire intersection, with a trolley car running beneath the El tracks.

The barn was torn down in 1949 to make way for Manhattan House Apartments; the Third Avenue El was demolished in 1956; and Manhattan's last trolley ceased operation in 1957.

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