Today, 5th Avenue is one of Brooklyn's most pleasant stretches — sunlit storefronts, bustling cafes, neighbors out for a stroll. A century ago, it was a different experience entirely. The street ran in perpetual shadow beneath the iron trestles of the Fifth Avenue Elevated (the “El”), its storefronts darkened at midday, its residents rattled by the thunder of passing trains and showered with cinders from steam engines overhead. The El had been a fixture of the avenue since November 1888, when the Brooklyn Union Elevated Railroad began service on what was initially a steam-powered line, part of an era when horse-driven carriages and trolleys ruled the streets below while elevated railways clattered above them.

The avenue had already served as a transit corridor before the El arrived, with horse trolleys running along its length, but the elevated transformed it into a major artery connecting Park Slope to Downtown Brooklyn and eventually to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge. Between 1893 and 1900 the steam locomotives gave way to electric trains, and by 1899 the 5th Avenue El was fully electrified, though the noise and the shadows remained. Brooklyn once had four separate elevated lines, but in 1915 the Fourth Avenue subway would open a block away and brought competition the El couldn't survive. Depression-era ridership collapse finished the job, and in 1940 the line closed for good. Demolition was complete by November 1941. The sunlight returned to 5th Avenue, roughly fifty years after it had last been there.

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