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| The elevated line at Broadway and 125th Street |
If you are a keen moviegoer like I am, you will almost
certainly be familiar with the elevated railway lines that are used to such
great effect in films like The French Connection, Saturday Night Fever, and
the opening credits of Welcome Back Kotter. While most of the elevated
lines in New York City (colloquially referred to as the ‘El’), have long
disappeared from Manhattan, wonderful examples of these amazing engineering
works can still be seen in Queens and Brooklyn. However, a short section of
elevated line for the ‘1’ Train still soars high above Broadway and 125th
Street in Harlem.
Manhattan’s most famous surviving section of elevated line
today must surely be the formerly abandoned, by now newly renovated west side
line. This has undergone a new lease of life, and been reborn as the incredibly
popular High Line (see Walking The High Line, Street View Comes to The High Line, and here...). All of which serves to introduce today’s
series of Monday Movies featuring the former Third Avenue El.
If Things Could Talk: The Vanishing ‘El’ [10:00]
As the name implies, the Third Avenue El, ran the length of
Manhattan’s Third Avenue before crossing over into the Bronx. The first
segments of the line opened in Manhattan in 1878, and service continued before
the line was eventually shut down in stages – beginning with the Manhattan
sections in the 1950s – before the complete shut down of the Bronx section in
1973.
The Third Avenue El was featured in a number of films,
including The Lost Weekend (1945),The Naked City (1948), On
the Town (1949), The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), and On
the Bowery (1956).
The 3rd Avenue El [10:39]
In this film a beatnik photographer with a tripod, a
stumbling drunk from the old Bowery, a giddy little girl travelling with her
father, and a couple on a romantic excursion help create a loose narrative of
life on the old El.
See more films at: http://www.weirdovideo.com
