Night on the L Train

The L train is a rapid transit service in the B Division of the New York City Subway. The L operates at all times between Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, Manhattan, and Rockaway Parkway in Canarsie, Brooklyn. It also briefly enters Queens at Halsey Street, serving the neighborhood of Ridgewood. It was the first New York City Subway service to be automated using communications-based train control.

In 1913, when he was 31, Hopper settled in Greenwich Village in New York City, where he remained for the rest of his life. There he discovered how crowded and isolated city life could be. The populations of American cities were skyrocketing, yet they were inhabited by passing strangers alienated from one another. Hopper would ride the L train and look down at the “dark glimpses of office interiors that were so fleeting as to leave fresh and vivid impressions on my mind.” In each room, a separate drama was unfolding, an unnoticed, oblivious island in a sea of people.

P.S. See Edward Hopper’s drawings that will blow your mind!