You can almost hear this elevated train grinding against the tracks as it makes its way up (or down?) Ninth Avenue.
The Ninth Avenue El (which traveled along Greenwich Street to Ninth Avenue and then to Columbus Avenue) was the city’s first elevated railroad, ferrying passengers since 1868.
Andreas Feininger captured the solitary steel beauty of the tracks as they glisten under the sun in this photo in 1940, the year the line shut down.
They seem like relics of another New York. But most buildings in the city higher than five or six stories have one of these wooden water tanks perched on stilt-like contraptions on the roof.
Photographer Andreas Feininger captured their beauty under a dusting of snow in this image, from 1952. I don’t know where this was taken, but there’s a good chance the water towers look exactly the same today.
Born in Paris in 1906 and trained as an architect, Andreas Feininger arrived in New York in 1939.
He soon landed a job as a staff photographer for Life magazine, which lasted into the early 1960s.
In that time, he had the opportunity to shoot all kinds of people and places. He’s known for his sweeping black and white vistas of the city skyline, buildings, and industry.
But it’s his color photos of 1950s Times Square that capture something magical and luminous.
The eerie glow of billboard lights, sidewalks slick with rain, and faceless bodies milling about under theater marquees depict Times Square’s midcentury beauty and mystery.
“I see the city as a living organism: dynamic, sometimes violent, and even brutal,” he reportedly said.
See more of Feininger’s haunting, glorious New York photos (mostly in black and white) here.
Ephemeral New York 