There’s a lot going on outside the Third Avenue Railroad Depot in this 1859 painting

Sometimes a painting has so much rich detail, it just knocks you out. That was my reaction to this magnificent scene of the Third Avenue Railroad Depot between 65th and 66th Streets, painted two years after the depot opened in 1857.

Amazingly, the painter of this “precise representation” of the depot, William H. Schenck, was also the company’s superintendent, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which owns the work.

In 1859, this stretch of what would become the Upper East Side (near the Treadwell Farm Historic District) was mostly untouched by developers, though some wood houses are off in the distance. Street lamps stand on corners, however, and the road looks paved.

The streetcars pulled by horses follow the rails in and out of the depot. People are scattered about; some are on horseback, and one man steers a wagon full of goods. A hot air balloon sails through the sky, what’s that about?

“In addition to highlighting the contemporary popularity of the horse-drawn streetcar, Schenck also included a hot-air balloon in the sky, identified in tiny letters as the Atlantic,” the Met states. “The balloon’s owners, John Wise and John LaMountain, hoped to fly it across the Atlantic Ocean to initiate an entirely new form of transportation, but they never succeeded.”

Sadly, the Third Avenue Railroad Depot was destroyed by fire four years later.

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.