Before and After Electricity

A while back, I put up a photo of the Bowery as seen in 1894, with the Third Avenue elevated tracks above. Here’s the picture:

Here’s a 1909 postcard of a similar view:

The third, express track wasn’t added to the el until 1917 and the Bowery is a wide street, so the tracks have a lot of open space between them. But there’s a huge difference dating from around 1902: the trains were electrified. In the earlier photo, the engine in the left is sending up a plume of coal smoke and, more importantly, dropping ash and the occasional cinder onto the street below. In the second picture, the trains are multiple-unit electric and so there are no engines, just the motors on each car’s wheels.

Note the there are also multiple tracks for streetcars: three parallel tracks in the foreground and (it looks like) four tracks in the background. Combine the el, the streetcars, and the relatively sparse vehicular traffic and this looks like a mass transit and pedestrian paradise, which is amusing given that it was a poor area with a bad reputation.