The Ninth and Sixth Avenue Elevated trains, constructed in the second half of the 19th century, were built as an answer to the city's growing congestion problem. By the 1940s the Els were outdated and inefficient in comparison to the newly constructed modern subways. Between 1939 and 1958 (largely though in 1939 and 1940) the massive steel structures were dismantled piece by piece.

This series is the complete line of the Ninth Avenue El as it existed between the 1870s and 1940.

By Lawrence Stelter Since the beginning of European colonization, the trade of goods and ideas created prosperity throughout the area around New York Bay. Industrialization further fueled growth and expansion, sometimes at exponential levels. As the population spread out, people worked, worshipped and took their recreation in places far from where they lived. Thus public transportation developed and inexorably grew. In 1832 the horse-drawn coach appeared, and soon thereafter came the horse car, which ran on rails. After the Civil War the horse-car network became inadequate to serve a population that was approaching one million. City leaders sought a means of transportation that would be separate from and unimpeded by the congested streets. Read this in its original format here.