Farewell to the El: Nostalgia for the Third Avenue Elevated Train

The Third Avenue El – the last elevated train in Manhattan – shut down in May of 1955, but it lived on in the memories of New Yorkers and in popular and high culture. Sunny Stalter-Pace explores the mid-century moment when nostalgia for the El reached its height. What aesthetic possibilities did filmmakers find in the elevated train stations and cars? How did the El offer a different sense of community and a different perspective on the city? And how does this moment in transit history help us understand contemporary elevated train lines and elevated parks?

Sunny Stalter-Pace, Associate Professor at Auburn University, received her PhD from Rutgers University and her BA from Loyola University Chicago. She specializes in American modernism, performance, and mobility studies. Her first monograph, Underground Movements: Modern Culture on the New York City Subway, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2013. Her current book project is a biography of vaudevillian Gertrude Hoffmann.

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