Sixth Avenue must have been awfully dark and grimy back in the days of the hulking El. This photo is from 1938. The Jefferson Market clock building and Bigelow’s are still there, of course. But the hideous Women’s House of Detention met the wrecking ball in 1974.
The Sixth Avenue El was dismantled in 1939 and sold as scrap metal to the Japanese, who supposedly melted it into ammo during World War II. Hence the great e.e. cummings anti-war line, “It took a nipponized bit of the old Sixth Avenue El, in the top of his head, to tell him.” The full poem is here.
Tags: e. e. cummings, Greenwich Village, Jefferson market, sixth avenue el
June 11, 2008 at 4:33 am |
[...] See an earlier post with a 1940 photo of Jefferson Market here. [...]
November 10, 2008 at 6:59 am |
[...] The El ran from 59th Street and Sixth Avenue, abruptly turned down West Third Street to West Broadway, then snaked down to Rector Street. It was torn down in the 1930s. [...]