Fruit carts at Eighth Avenue and West 143rd Street, 1937. The Ninth Avenue El (which ran along Eighth Avenue from 110th Street to the Harlem River) was the first elevated rail line in New York. The original section, from Battery Place to Cortlandt Street, along Greenwich Street, opened in 1868 as the West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway, an experimental single-track cable-powered elevated railway. The section of the line seen here (the traditional two-track line) opened in 1879. The elevated line was closed in 1940, except for a short "Polo Grounds" shuttle between 155th Street and Burnside Avenue in the Bronx, which ceased operations in 1958. Difficult to see unless the photograph is zoomed in, are the small posters of President FDR tacked up among the signs and prices for the produce.