Painting the Town -- Museum of the City of New York

In 1878 the newly reorganized Metropolitan Elevated Railroad (known formerly as the Gilbert Elevated) opened several new transit lines in New York, including a prime route on Sixth Avenue running between Rector Place and Central Park. To design the line's passenger stations, the railroad directors enlisted Jasper F. Cropsey (1823 -1900), a renowned Hudson River School landscape painter who had studied architecture years before (see plate 16). For the project, Cropsey retrieved his knowledge of the Gothic Revival style that had been in high vogue when he had visited London in the late 1840s to further his art education.¹ That influence, still evident in this view dating from the brink of the Great Depression, resulted in a series of picturesque "Hudson River Gothic" bungalows that may have appeared quite ordinary on the ground but created a striking impact when hoisted into the air to adjoin the elevated train tracks.

Cropsey solved the problem of access to the track platforms by having passengers enter and exit the system through covered pavilion staircases that rose in graceful tiers to each station's enclosed waiting room. From the sidewalk these stations -with their peaked gables, quaint cupolas, and lacy balustrades -resembled welcoming gingerbread cottages. The cheerful effect, enhanced by the stations' color scheme of fresh apple-green paint with darker hunter-green and maroon trim, did much to mitigate the gloom that the track superstructure cast over the underlying streets. Although their facades called to mind rustic wood carpentry, the El stations were principally made of iron, an innovation presumably adopted as an effort toward fireproofing.

With her richly toned palette, Ruth Carroll constructs a view of Sixth Avenue at 8th Street, looking west, that preserves a sense of the chromatic contributions the El's stations made to the immediate areas they served -in this case, an otherwise ordinary neighborhood thick with tenements, warehouses, small shops, and time-worn row houses abutting the West Village. A strong interest in color values and geometry, noticeable in the play of shadows within the cityscape as well as in Carroll's patterned brushstrokes, informs the composition. The scene includes its share of narrative details: a streetcar, a truck, and an automobile sharing pavement with what seems to be a horse-drawn cart; a hurdy-gurdy man who, at the approach of bad weather, finds convenient shelter under the El so he can continue entertaining; a passenger ascending the final tier of steps into the station's waiting room, soon to join another solitary figure waiting on the platform track. The comparative quiet of Carroll's vignette suggests a weekend morning, for the traffic on the Sixth Avenue El during weekdays was typically heavy.² A whimsical touch is the shop awning sign visible in the painting's lower-left corner, which bears the artist's name.

Ruth Carroll graduated from Vassar College and thereafter established roots in New York City, where she pursued training at the Art Students League under Cecilia Beaux, Charles Bridgman, and Andrew Dasburg, the last of whom probably influenced her Cézannesque approach to painting. In the 1920s her work was exhibited at the Newark Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She later changed course within the art field, developing a career as an author-illustrator of children's books. From 1936 through the end of World War II, she had a staff position at King Features Syndicate, creators of the popular Popeye cartoons, among other series.³

Notes:

1 Cropsey had been apprenticed to the New York City architectural firm of Joseph Trench from 1837 to 1842. Although better known as a painter, he had opted to work on selective residential and church commissions throughout his career. Nevertheless, his selection for the El station assignment was considered something of a curiosity, given that he was neither a civil engineer nor experienced in the new technology of elevated railroads. Scholars now surmise that his connection to the Metropolitan Railway executives may have been through George Pullman, a backer of the system and contractor for many of its cars. Cropsey had supervised the construction of two houses for Pullman in Chicago and Long Branch, New Jersey.

2 Passenger volume on the Sixth Avenue Elevated rose measurably in the early decades of the twentieth century, after the line was electrified. Its greatest level of usage was registered in 1921, when the line carried riders in the millions.

3 Carroll's career as a painter and graphic artist is summarized in Who Was Who in American Art (Madison, Conn.: Soundview Press, 1985), p. 103. She married Latrobe Carroll of New York, residing on lower Fifth Avenue near Washington Square through the early 1980s.


Elevated Station c. 1929 -1930 Ruth Carroll (b. 1899) Oil on canvas, 25 X 30 1/4 Signed on shop awning, lower left: Ruth Carroll Gift of the artist, 80.163.1
In 1878 the newly reorganized Metropolitan Elevated Railroad (known formerly as the Gilbert Elevated) opened several new transit lines in New York, including a prime route on Sixth Avenue running between Rector Place and Central Park. To design the line's passenger stations, the railroad directors enlisted Jasper F. Cropsey (1823 -1900), a renowned Hudson River School landscape painter who had studied architecture years before (see plate 16). For the project, Cropsey retrieved his knowledge of the Gothic Revival style that had been in high vogue when he had visited London in the late 1840s to further his art education.¹ That influence, still evident in this view dating from the brink of the Great Depression, resulted in a series of picturesque "Hudson River Gothic" bungalows that may have appeared quite ordinary on the ground but created a striking impact when hoisted into the air to adjoin the elevated train tracks. Cropsey solved the problem of access to the track platforms by having passengers enter and exit the system through covered pavilion staircases that rose in graceful tiers to each station's enclosed waiting room. From the sidewalk these stations -with their peaked gables, quaint cupolas, and lacy balustrades -resembled welcoming gingerbread cottages. The cheerful effect, enhanced by the stations' color scheme of fresh apple-green paint with darker hunter-green and maroon trim, did much to mitigate the gloom that the track superstructure cast over the underlying streets. Although their facades called to mind rustic wood carpentry, the El stations were principally made of iron, an innovation presumably adopted as an effort toward fireproofing. With her richly toned palette, Ruth Carroll constructs a view of Sixth Avenue at 8th Street, looking west, that preserves a sense of the chromatic contributions the El's stations made to the immediate areas they served -in this case, an otherwise ordinary neighborhood thick with tenements, warehouses, small shops, and time-worn row houses abutting the West Village. A strong interest in color values and geometry, noticeable in the play of shadows within the cityscape as well as in Carroll's patterned brushstrokes, informs the composition. The scene includes its share of narrative details: a streetcar, a truck, and an automobile sharing pavement with what seems to be a horse-drawn cart; a hurdy-gurdy man who, at the approach of bad weather, finds convenient shelter under the El so he can continue entertaining; a passenger ascending the final tier of steps into the station's waiting room, soon to join another solitary figure waiting on the platform track. The comparative quiet of Carroll's vignette suggests a weekend morning, for the traffic on the Sixth Avenue El during weekdays was typically heavy.² A whimsical touch is the shop awning sign visible in the painting's lower-left corner, which bears the artist's name. Ruth Carroll graduated from Vassar College and thereafter established roots in New York City, where she pursued training at the Art Students League under Cecilia Beaux, Charles Bridgman, and Andrew Dasburg, the last of whom probably influenced her Cézannesque approach to painting. In the 1920s her work was exhibited at the Newark Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She later changed course within the art field, developing a career as an author-illustrator of children's books. From 1936 through the end of World War II, she had a staff position at King Features Syndicate, creators of the popular Popeye cartoons, among other series.³ Notes: 1 Cropsey had been apprenticed to the New York City architectural firm of Joseph Trench from 1837 to 1842. Although better known as a painter, he had opted to work on selective residential and church commissions throughout his career. Nevertheless, his selection for the El station assignment was considered something of a curiosity, given that he was neither a civil engineer nor experienced in the new technology of elevated railroads. Scholars now surmise that his connection to the Metropolitan Railway executives may have been through George Pullman, a backer of the system and contractor for many of its cars. Cropsey had supervised the construction of two houses for Pullman in Chicago and Long Branch, New Jersey. 2 Passenger volume on the Sixth Avenue Elevated rose measurably in the early decades of the twentieth century, after the line was electrified. Its greatest level of usage was registered in 1921, when the line carried riders in the millions. 3 Carroll's career as a painter and graphic artist is summarized in Who Was Who in American Art (Madison, Conn.: Soundview Press, 1985), p. 103. She married Latrobe Carroll of New York, residing on lower Fifth Avenue near Washington Square through the early 1980s.