The 3rd Avenue Elevated line in Manhattan was
constructed between 1875 and 1878 by the New York Elevated Railway
Company. The line was to run from City Hall along the Bowery and Third
Avenue to the Harlem River. The Manhattan Railway Company took
control of the New York Elevated Railroad in 1879, and in in 1891, the
Manhattan Railway took over operations of a short railroad between
129th Street and 133rd Street in the southern Bronx, then operated by
the Suburban Rapid Transit Company. Through service between the Bronx
and Manhattan began in 1896. A 999-year lease deal made in 1902
brought the Third Avenue El under the control of the Interborough
Rapid Transit Company.
Later construction under the Dual Contracts
triple-tracked the main line of the elevated railroad in Manhattan and
the Bronx. Originally operated by wooden elevated "gate" cars, these
cars were later modified with closed-in vestibules and automatic doors
and were known as the "MUDC" (Multiple Unit Door Control) fleet. In
later years the 3rd Avenue line was operated by IRT "Composite" cars,
retiring the MUDC fleet. Finally, after the 1940 transit unification,
the 3rd Avenue el even saw BMT "Q" type cars running in Manhattan and
the Bronx.
The Third Avenue El was the last elevated line to
operate in Manhattan. Service to South Ferry ended in 1950, and to
City Hall in 1953. The main line of the 3rd Avenue elevated in
Manhattan had service from Chatham Square north until 1955. From 1955
to 1973 Bronx service operated between 149th St and Gun Hill Road.
The New York World · Tuesday,
August 27th, 1878
East Side Rapid Transit; Trains clattering over
the elevated iron road up the Bowery and Third Avenue.
The east side branch of the New York Elevated Railroad
fulfilled part of the promise of rapid transit yesterday by beginning
to run trains from the South Ferry to the Grand Central Depot in
Forty-second street. All matters had been thoroughly arranged before
the first trip was made; the exact running time that the new engines
could make was decided upon and a schedule had been carefully
arranged. There were but few stations, however, at which passengers
were picked up and dropped. Those were at South Ferry, Hanover
square, Fulton street, Eighth street and Forty-second street. The
first trip was made from South Ferry to Grand Central Depot at 5:30
A. M., and the distance traveled in twenty-five minutes.
A reporter of THE WORLD road on a train that left South
Ferry about 1 P.M. This station is a common one for both branches,
and many crowd in waiting started for the door when the agent called
out "All passengers for the east side or Third avenue." There were
two handsome cars on the train of maroon color, touched with gold and
light paints, and glistening with varnish. The engine also was new
and was provided with a regular locomotive cab. The cars within were
finished entirely in wood, the seats being of perforated pattern now
so common, and running lengthwise of the car. The roofs were
slightly decorated, and there was an appearance of neatness without
the attempt at elegance of the Metropolitan road.
While the reporter was examining the cars with a critical
eye the train was already far on its way through the narrow down-town
streets. Through Pearl street it ran, making a deafening clatter
with the rattle of the road itself, the grinding of the wheels and the
reverberations from the buildings. People in the street below,
however, seemed to pay no attention to the engine and cars and the
horses stood quietly in front of their trucks and carts, without
drivers near, and munched their fodder. In Third avenue the horses
of the surface cars and of wagons jogged along, people looked into
shop windows and not to the sky, and the only difference was the
train, having more room on each side, did not make so much noise.
By this time, after one or two stops, the two cars were
comfortably filled, several of the passengers being women. The
reporter, for lack of anything else to do, attempted to read the store
signs, as he was rapidly carried along. Only the big ones were
readable. A woman knitting at a window was unpleasantly confounded
with a man pressing hats, and a barber in the second story of a house,
leisurely shaving a customer, became by a sort of dissolving view
arrangement a fat German woman energetically spanking a child.
Cooper Institute suddenly loomed up -- a dark mass.
There was not much of the journey left after this, nor much novelty.
There was the same round of women sitting at windows, sewing and
occasionally half lazily looking at the cars that shot past their
houses; and of people quietly walking along the streets, until the
train turned to Forty-second street, frightened a team of horses
attached to a brewer's dray and then halted at the Grand Central
Depot.
As the reporter passed out of the car he said to one of
the conductors:
"Were you connected with the west-side road?"
"Yes," answered the man.
"Have you noticed any difference between the noise of the
two roads?"
"I should think I have."
"Which is the worst?"
"This."
It is certain that a horrible shriek and squeak of metal
on metal, as if the cars were dragged over the track with brakes down,
is sometimes to be heard on the east side and strange to the west.
The construction of the east side branch of the New York
Elevated road was begun about the 1st of last November, under
contracts with the New Jersey Iron and Steel Company, the Passaic
Rolling Mill Company. J. B. & J. N. Cornell and A. R. Whitney
Brother, the railroad company furnishing the plans and
specifications. There are two different kinds of structure on the
new road. The longitudinal girders and columns are substantially the
same on both branches, but on Front and Pearl streets, as far as
Franklin square, the columns are straight up to the cross girders.
The remainder are curved. On Third avenue, above Fifth street, the
two tracks are connected by arched girders. Mr. Walter Katte, the
chief engineer of the road, said yesterday that he thought the road
would be finished to Sixty-first street about October 1st and to
Harlem before the 1st of January.
Each car will accommodate forty-eight persons.
The engines are all of the same kind, excepting that some
have four wheels and others eight. Both will be tried until it is
found which will answer best. Many new men have been taken on and
the entire force has been divided between the two branches, so that
there will be an old hand on each train running on the east side. The
trains will run at ten-minute intervals between 5:30 and 6: A.M.,
five minutes between 6 and 10 A. M., six minutes between 10 A. M. and
3 P. M., five minutes between 3 and 7:30 P. M., and ten minutes
between 7:30 and 8 P. M., when the line will be closed. Between
the hours of 5 and 7:30 A. M. and 5 and 7 P. M. the fare will be 5
cents; at other times, 10 cents. The running time for the trip will
be twenty-five minutes until the engines and cars are broken in.
The following answers about the noise on the road were
collected by the Post reporter:
At Lamke Brothers', grocers, No. 103 Third avenue: "Naw,
we are used to noises on this avenue."
At Charles Eitenbenz's boot and shoe shop, No. 89 Third
avenue: "No, in about a week we don't hear it no more."
At Meyerholz & Blum's florists, No. 77 Third avenue: "No,
we ain't got no time to notice it."
At George P. Lies's cigar store, No. 59 Third avenue:
"No, it doesn't make as much noise as Sixth avenue."
At George W. Hamill's, undertaker, No. 26 Third avenue:
"No, you listen now: it's not as loud as that street-car."
