The first children’s court was in the East Village

Say you were a 19th century New York kid picked up by cops for pickpocketing or stealing candy.

Like all alleged offenders, your case would go before a judge, and you might even have been held in one of the city’s infamous prisons, like the Tombs, with other adults.

But in the early 1900s, a novel idea hit in the city: trying minors under age 16 in a special court just for kids, to “guard children against the exposure and environment of crime,” as a 1902 New York Times piece put it.

City law already made a few concessions for minors; for example, they waited for their case in a separate room, so they wouldn’t come into contact with “the intemperate and dissolute classes that are found in police courts.”

But reformers wanted to take it a step further. Most of the crimes kids committed were misdemeanors, and the thinking was that a separate court “inclined toward mercy,” in the words of another Times writer, would help keep children from becoming hardened criminals.

With this in mind, the city’s first Children’s Court opened that year at Third Avenue and 11th Street (second image) in today’s East Village, “with much fanfare,” wrote Robert Pigott in his 2014 book, New York Legal Landmarks.

The building had been part of the criminal justice system in New York already; it was the former headquarters of The Department of Public Charities and Correction.

Thousands of kids were brought in during the court’s early years, and the top charges were disorderly conduct and petit larceny. Forgery, arson, and even drunkeness also made the list of offenses.

“William Buckley, fourteen years old, was charged with intoxication,” read one Times article in 1905. “He also realized that he had lost his job, by which he had supported himself for two years since the death of his mother.”

“Justice Deuel talked to the lad about the dangers of drinking, released him on parole, and told him to report at once to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in the event that a friendly laundryman could not find a place for him.”

Children’s Court didn’t curb the number of crimes committed by kids. But it was deemed a success because judges were able to keep children out of the criminal justice system by giving them suspended sentences or probation, not jail or reformatory time.

Of the young offenders brought in, it is “reasonable to state that at least 50 percent would have been committed to institutions under the old method,'” the Times quoted the chief probation officer.

In 1912, Children’s Court moved to East 22nd Street (above left). It’s now part of the city’s Family Court system, but the second building still stands today and is part of Baruch College, a branch of CUNY (above).

[Second photo: MCNY, 1911, 2010.11.41961911; third photo: LOC/Bain Collection, 1902; fourth photo: MCNY, 1917, 2010.7.5154; fifth photo: Google]

Taking the 3rd Avenue El to the Botanical Garden

We can’t be sure that these genteel New Yorkers actually took the Third Avenue El to get to the New York Botanical Garden, a 250-acre cultural treasure founded in 1891.

But after the turn of the century, when this image was likely taken, there was no easier way to get from Manhattan to the Gardens or the new Zoo opened nearby in 1899.

You could say that the El, the Botanical Garden, and the Bronx or New York Zoological Park, as it was called, are all products of a great late 19th century push to improve city life and its offerings, making New York easier to transverse and giving it world-class cultural institutions—all of which we continue to benefit from.

Bold shapes and colors of a 1930s El station

Francis Criss’ “Third Avenue El” depicts an austere elevated station in 1933 devoid of people and trains. The coolness of the design contrasts with the warmth of colors.

Criss, usually described as a precisionist painter, created Depression-era urban cityscapes marked by bold colors and geometric shapes.

The subjects of these two downtown New York paintings still look the same almost a century later.

A “dreamlike” vision of the Third Avenue El

In his 1934 painting “Third Avenue,” precisionist Charles L. Goeller depicts a crisp, geometrical street corner, with the gray elevated train tracks and then the sleek Chrysler Building looming in the distance.

“The artist lived just a few doors east of this corner, yet his rendition of the familiar scene is strangely dreamlike,” states the website of the Smithsonian Institute, which has “Third Avenue” in its collection.

“Like his fellow painters in the precisionist movement, Goeller stressed the clean geometry of the modern city. All elements of his painting direct attention to the rising spire of the Chrysler Building, a vision of an ideal future shaped by American engineering.”

“Such foreground details as trash lying by the curb and scarred red paint where a sign has been removed from a wall seem deliberately introduced to contrast with the flawless edifice in the distance.”

When New Yorkers tried to rename Third Avenue

1956 was a crucial year for seven-mile Third Avenue.

That’s when the last piece of steel from the Third Avenue El was dismantled (below at 34th Street in the 1930s), bringing sunlight and broad views to a thoroughfare long known for its shadows and grime.

And right about when the El was finally removed, some residents and real estate officials called for Third Avenue to be given a more glamorous name.

“[Borough President Hulan E. Jack] said that at least five new names had been suggested,” wrote The New York  Times on February 17, after a ceremony marking the removal of a steel column.

Among them were The Bouwerie, United Nations Avenue, International Boulevard, and Nathan Hale Boulevard (the Revolutionary War hero was reportedly hanged at today’s Third Avenue and 66th Street).

“One atomic-minded New Yorker had offered Fission Avenue,” stated the Times.

Borough President Jack was against a name change, though he did propose renaming the Bowery “Third Avenue South” to get rid of the Bowery’s “connotation of drunken derelicts and broken dreams.”

In the end, of course, Third Avenue remained Third Avenue . . . and the Bowery now connotes boutique hotels.

[Photo: New York City Municipal Archives]

Three centuries and three views of the Bowery

“In pre-Colonial days, the Bowery was a country lane, running between the ‘bouweries’ (farms) of the Dutch burghers,” the caption to this 1888 photo reminds us. It’s part of the fascinating photo collection New York Then and Now, published by Dover in 1976.

The 19th century history of the Bowery is well known: it went from premier entertainment district to a skid row of cheap theaters, flophouses, and eponymous bums.

What’s interesting in the above photo of Bowery at Canal Street is that the tracks of the Third Avenue El, constructed in 1878, are on each side of the street.

“In 1915 the structure and stations were rebuilt, with the addition of an express track, and were moved to the center of the street, providing more light for pedestrians and stores,” the book explains.

Here is the same intersection in 1975. No more elevated; no more horses and wagons. Chinatown has edged in, yet most of the tenements that existed 87 years earlier are still there.

And so is the faded ad for “Carriage Materials” on the east side of the street!

The carriage materials ad has been painted over by 2013, and some of the old tenements and the big wooden water tower on the far right are gone too.

The intersection of Bowery and Canal Streets looks like one more bustling traffic-choked corner.

The Third Avenue El on its way to Cooper Square

Take away the el tracks and the rickety carts, and the Bowery looking north from about Grand Street doesn’t look all that different today.

The low-rise tenement buildings on the left are still there, now occupied by lighting shops. Cooper Union looms way in the distance. Casperfelds & Cleveland, the jewelers with two signs on the left, are long gone though.

This color postcard shows the rest of the block out of view, with the Bowery Savings Bank anchoring the corner.

A shout to Third Avenue on a Harlem facade

It’s a crucial north-south avenue that spans 120 blocks and many neighborhoods. But Third Avenue in Manhattan gets little love—except on the facade of this tenement off 104th Street.

The lettering was probably much easier to see from the Third Avenue El, which ran at least in part along the avenue from 1878 until 1955.

Curious about what it was like to ride the el? This 1950s video clip takes you along for all the noisy, rickety twists and turns. It’s great footage of a very different East Side.

Elliott Erwitt’s strange and sublime city photos

Paris-born photographer and filmmaker Elliott Erwitt has captured scenes all over the world.

But his New York photos, dating from the 1940s to the 2000s, come off as especially poetic, showcasing the pathos and isolation inherent in modern city life.

[A boy rides the Third Avenue El in this 1955 shot]

They’re also witty, bringing the viewer in on the joke with a focus on the weird and ridiculous—like the two grown men duking it out under an el platform in 1950, or the dog and masked owner on a stoop in 2000.

Here’s what a New York Times reviewer had to say back in May, when a retrospective of Erwitt’s work opened at the International Center of Photography.

“Mr. Erwitt has been a seeker of the ‘decisive moment,’ an instant in real time when people, animals or objects appear before the camera in surprising and illuminating ways. What distinguishes Mr. Erwitt’s work has been his keen eye for the comedy in everyday life.”

Leaving Bloomingdale’s on the Third Avenue El

Painter Lionel S. Reiss’ 1946 watercolor, “Going Home (Near Bloomingdale’s and the 59th Street Elevated),” captures a crowd of mothers, shop girls, laborers, and businessmen ascending the packed staircase.

I love the piece of the Chop Suey sign on the right—a vestige of the New York of a long-ago time.