A Wealth Of Detail

The elevated structure shared by the Sixth and Ninth Avenue elevated trains, on Columbus Avenue, circa 1880:

We appear to be under a station, as the structure is a full bay wider where we are than it is up the street. We may be on the top run of a dog-leg staircase from the street to a platform: that appears to be a stair roof on the far right of the left-hand image. More importantly, we’ve got a catalog of fantastic wrought-iron details. First, the columns holding up the structure are four-segment Phoenix columns, riveted together to create hollow circle-sections:

The X-bracing rods are not very stiff against out-of-plane sway from wind, so they need to be connected where they cross to prevent damage. I like the (probably cast-iron) star connections:

The lower tier couldn’t be cross-braced unless someone wanted to see some truly horrible traffic accidents, so there are bracketed moment connections between the lower-tier beams and the columns. The brackets are incredible, with trefoils, quatrefoils, and a nice curve to their lower chords:

In the picture above, you can also see the clevises used to connect the upper cross-bracing rods.

In a world without standardization of iron or steel shapes and without established standard practice for connections, people experimented. Each new structure might have a different pattern for brackets, or a different way of making a connection.

One detail that’s missing is exactly where this was taken. I can’t make out any of the store signs in enough detail to research them – the store on the middle of the far right is George something Family Boots and shoes, probably but that’s not enough to go on. Tutt’s Pills, on the painted ad, were a national company. The height of the tracks makes me wonder if we’re looking south from near 110th Street, with the famous Suicide Curve behind us. The tracks near that big S-curve were quite high and had cross-bracing similar to what we see here. Or maybe this is the portion of the line on Eighth Avenue, north of the curve, and the catalog label that says its Columbus Avenue is wrong.