CHARLES LANE
Between West and Washington Streets, Perry and Charles Street
SEPTEMBER 20, 1938. ABBOTT FILE L-19

Abbott claimed that Charles Lane was the only back alley she ever found in New York City. The lane was one block long, sandwiched between the New York Central Railroad freight viaduct--seen at a distance in Abbott's photograph--and the elevated West Side Highway. A 1905 warehouse on Perry Street backed onto the north side of the lane, which Abbott did not include on the left side of the photograph. Instead, she focused on the south side, which was still lined with stables and tradesmen shops, as it had been in the nineteenth century.

First paved with cobblestones in 1893, Charles Lane is still cobblestoned, but its buildings, both old and new, are now residential. Although the elevated highway and freight viaduct have been demolished, the narrow alley has retained its scale and quaint character, after a successful battle in the late 1960s against a proposal for a high-rise housing project.

Abbott's picturesque photograph belongs to a long-standing documentary tradition, which was familiar to her in Atget's work. Among his regular clientele were government agencies and antiquarians who sought to document ancient streets as they were demolished to make way for modern thoroughfares. No doubt Abbott was struck by this tiny lane lodged between two recently completed transport behemoths, the viaduct and the highway. She may have enhanced the alley's picturesque appearance by arranging an old bucket in the foreground.

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