The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part One: South Side R.R. of L.I./Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
The South Side Rail Road Reaches the East River
WHILE the company was completing its main line Babylon, important events were happening on the west end of the line during the spring and summer of 1867. When the railhead approached the headwaters of Newtown Creek, it became necessary to make a decision: should the road seek its river-front terminal by going along the north bank of the creek into Long Island City, or should it follow the south bank into the Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn? Since the Long Island RR and the Flushing RR already had their termini in Long Island City, the company favored Brooklyn for its depot.
As early as the fall of 1866 long before the road turned a shovelful of earth, some of its promoters induced some of the prominent residents of Williamsburgh to support them in a petition addressed to the Common Council of Brooklyn to enter the city along the line of Metropolitan Avenue and North Third Street down to the ferry, and with a main depot at Union Avenue. The residents of the then very new village of Greenpoint signified that they were more than willing to let the railroad come through their area, should Brooklyn prove inhospitable.
Williamsburgh at the end of the Civil War had grown into a large city; between 1850 and 1855 it had been an independent city and had then merged into Brooklyn as the Eastern District. The Common Council was understandably hesitant about permitting a steam railroad to lay its tracks through a densely settled area where there was menace to life and limb. The Council wisely decided to open the question to public discussion and advertised public hearings in the press. The editors of the local papers seized upon the topic as one of paramount importance to the community, and threw open their columns to the widest public discussion.
Thanks to the long series of articles contributed by every shade of opinion, we can appreciate today the feelings pro and con about steam in the streets. In the Williamsburgh of the 1860's Bushwick Avenue, a north-south street, marked the limit of settlement. East of Bushwick Avenue stretched a very large area of swamp and meadowland forming the headwaters of Newtown Creek. No houses dotted this primeval greensward. Farmers pastured their cows in its fields and cut hay for winter fodder. Two roads only cut through the meadows: Maspeth Avenue and Metropolitan Avenue.
On the edge of the meadows and near the junction of the above avenues stood the old-time glue factory of Peter Cooper, one of the merchant princes of his day and the founderof Cooper Union. He owned nearly all the land in the area, while the Thursby family of ropewalk fame and the Kalbfleisch family (mayor of Brooklyn) owned the rest. The Coopers vigorously opposed the incursion of the South Side RR and led the opposition against the road. Cooper alleged that 100% of the people were opposed to the railroad and in rebuttal angry letters appeared in the Times attacking Cooper for self-interest and inaccuracy. The controversy raged unabated during May, June and July 1867 and finally came to a head in November and December.
Briefly, opponents of the South Side RR made these telling points against a line on Metropolitan Avenue to the ferry:
1. Travelers from Long Island would simply pass through Williamsburgh and not spend any money in the District.
2. The District contained twelve churches and three large public schools, the pupils of whom were threatened with maiming and death at the hands of the railroad.
3. Steam cars would inevitably depress the value of building lots just coming onto the market.
4. Steam would blight the residential area between the ferry and Bushwick Avenue, as had happened on Park Avenue and Eleventh Avenue in New York.
5. The speed of steam cars will be greater than that of horse cars and so be a greater menace to pedestrians.
6. A depot on the East River would crowd existing factories, and the trans-shipment of manure would make the area intolerable to residents.
7. Metropolitan Avenue was narrow, twenty-four feet in some places and sixty feet at most anywhere, leaving no room for vehicular traffic.
8. Metropolitan Avenue varied widely in grade; a steep rise from the ferry to Bedford Avenue, a deep dip near Union Avenue, etc. The grade varied eight feet over all and because nineteen streets intersected it, cutting it down to a level for steam engines would be unthinkable.
Proponents of the South Side Rail Road urged these points in answer:
1. Peter Cooper's opposition stems from his unwillingness to move his pestilential glue factory.
2. A large produce market would be set up at the South Side terminus as an outlet for the Long Island farmers, providing fresh produce for all and employment for many.
3. The railroad will not depress, but will rather increase the value of property along the street.
4. Streets with railroads hum with life but wither away with the driving out of steam traffic; see what Atlantic Avenue was before 1861 and what it is now.
5. Opposition to the South Side RR is being secretly abetted by President Oliver Charlick of the LIRR who fears competition, and the owners of the Long Island City ferries who fear loss of patronage.
6. Quick, cheap transit to the suburbs is one of Brooklyn's crying needs.
7. Access to Long Island summer resorts and beaches will be a boon to every Brooklyn family.
8. Progress cannot be stopped by a Japanese policy of a closed door.
9. The distance the railroad would go through crowded city streets is only a half mile to a Union Avenue depot or a mile to the ferry.
As the argument raged in the hearings and in the press, the local newspaper came out strongly in favor of the South Side road. The Brooklyn Times and the Brooklyn Union championed the railroad, and the Eagle favored the idea. There were not wanting voices of compromise. Some suggested running the road to the Wallabout Basin (now the Navy Yard) along the lowlands marking the division between old Brooklyn and Williamsburgh, approximately along the line of Flushing Avenue, then sparsely settled. Another school of thinking viewed favorably a private right-of-way running midway between Maspeth and Metropolitan Avenues as far as Bushwick Avenue. Still others liked the idea of a line along Newtown Creek down to the East River by-passing Williamsburgh altogether.
In the first week of July 1867 the hot dispute came to a vote in the Common Council and the railroad was refused entry into Brooklyn along the line of Metropolitan Avenue with steam cars. In September the South Side RR again petitioned the Common Council to enter Brooklyn, this time along the line of Dickinson Avenue, then north up Vandervoort Avenue to Orient, and west along Orient Avenue to the jnuction of Metropolitan and Bushwick Avenues. This route was poor, involving two sharp turns, yet opposition again developed despite the absence of houses along the route.
As November 1867 wore on with no solution in sight, the Brooklyn Times editorially suggested that the South Side might achieve a river terminus cheaply and easily by going along the line of Bushwick Creek (North Thirteenth Street and through McCarren Park), the very route later to be chosen for the Manhattan Beach road, but intimated that the railroad should be satisfied with a depot on Bushwick Avenue.
The South Side RR made one last try before accepting the advice of the Times. On November 28, 1867 the road petitioned the Common Conucil to enter Brooklyn along the line of Montrose Avenue and to build a depot at Union Avenue. The advantages were that Montrose Avenue was eighty feet wide in Williamsburgh and that east of Bushwick Avenue, it existed only on paper, traversing a swamp and meadow with not a single house. From Bushwick to Union Avenue was densely populated, to be sure, but this stretch was only five blocks long.
No one at all objected to the meadowland route to the east, but for the five block stretch to Union Avenue there was strong opposition because of the dense population all about; all the old arguments against steam were trotted out and restated. Some one proposed a tunnel but the railroad engineers pointed out that the ground level was only seven to ten feet above high water and that the railroad was unable to expend the estimated cost of almost a million dollars.
As the year 1867 came to a close with the matter still deadlocked, the railroad accepted what had long been apparent: a terminus on the edge of the city (Bushwick Avenue) and the use of horses to pull the cars the rest of the distance to the ferry. As soon as the railroad made known its willingness to accept this compromise, the Common Council on December 16 gratefully ended the long dispute by granting a depot on Bushwick Avenue at Montrose Avenue and a single-track horse-operated road to the ferry at the foot of South Seventh Street.
When it became evident to the South Side RR that an outlet to the East River was certain, negotiations were begun to acquire a site on the waterfront for a depot. The company first negotiated for the Tuttle Coal Yard at Wythe and South Seventh but the price of $33,000 for 3 lots struck the directors as too high. The ferry stand at the foot of South Eighth Street, and a lot at South Eighth and Kent either cost too much or else provided insufficient space. After much searching about, the railroad finally managed to buy a plot of ground directly on the water between Broadway (old South Seventh Street) and South Eighth Street. The site had formerly been a coal yard and the railroad simply took over the existing office building as a freight depot. The property consisted of eight city lots, with a frontage on Kent Avenue of sixty-eight feet and a depth of 156 feet. Since the property directly adjoined the Broadway Ferry, it provided ideal accommodations for passengers.
With the depot problem solved at last, the South Side RR lost no time in building its track from Jamaica to the Broadway Ferry. As of December 1867 the track was completed from Jamaica to 118th Street., Richmond Hill, and the iron and ties were distributed along the line as far as Fresh Pond Road only three miles from the South Seventh Street ferry. The hard frosts and winter weather made track laying unsuitable, so the company used to good advantage the months of February and March in securing a route between Bushwick terminus and South Seventh Street ferry. On February 20, 1868 a petition was presented by the owners of property on Broadway to permit the railroad to run horse cars on Broadway. On March 2 the Common Council granted this request, giving the South Side a line along Montrose Avenue from Bushwick Avenue to Union Avenue, down Union Avenue a block to Broadway, and thence along Broadway to the ferry. The only conditions set were that the company should pave the rails with stone, operate only steam coaches, not park cars in the public street, and transport no manure.
While this arrangement seemed to please everybody at first sight, there was one hidden flaw. The Broadway R.R. Co., a street car company, was already operating a line of horse cars along Montrose Avenue to Bushwick Avenue. Rather than lay a second track beside that of the Broadway Company, or enter upon long and involved negotiations with them, President Fox of the South Side petitioned the Common Council to substitute Boerum Street instead, two blocks to the south. This time, miraculously, the permission was forthcoming immediately without long and dreary litigation.
With the entire route to Brooklyn cleared at last, the contractors building the road pushed their work. Just at this juncture, President Oliver Charlick of the LIRR shrewdly introduced another obstacle. As lessee of the Brooklyn Central & Jamaica RR since 1866, Charlick secured an injunction from the courts to prevent the South Side RR from crossing his road at Dunton west of Jamaica. It was but a delaying maneuver at best and within a month's time, the injunction was dissolved and construction continued onward.
By February 15, 1868 the gang had completed the track to Fresh Ponds and it was debated whether to open service immediately or wait to reach Brooklyn. On the nineteenth, as a party of workmen were excavating in a cut west of Fresh Pond Road, the bank suddenly caved in burying three men; thanks to prompt rescue work, all three were dug out uninjured. During April another gang was hard at work driving piles along the route through the meadows adjoining Newtown Creek. All during the fair spring weather the work was being pushed night and day and it was announced the road would enter Brooklyn by June 25. The heavy cutting involved in passing the ridge of hills near the Lutheran Cemetery proved the biggest obstacle.
On Saturday, July 18, 1868 the great day arrived after months of preparation; the first train passed over the South Side RR into Bushwick station, carrying 600 passengers. As yet there was no real depot. The railroad had taken over a farmhouse of Revolutionary vintage on the property, once the homestead of the Schenck family, and used it as a temporary waiting room and ticket office. The railroad had to rely on the Bushwick Avenue and Montrose Avenue horse cars to transport its passengers to the ferry, and there was lively competition for this privilege between the Brooklyn City and Broadway Railroads.
The opening of the South Side line to Brooklyn was welcomed as one of the greatest events in the history of Williamsburgh. The press saw it as a final rectification of the blunder of driving steam service from Atlantic Avenue seven years before. It was now possible to reach Jamaica in twenty minutes less time, and more important, brought the whole of the south side of Long Island into easy reach of Brooklyn. The new equipment and high standard of roadbed was favorably contrasted with the older Long Island RR, and looking far into the future, the press envisioned the many new villages and handsome residences that would grow up.
Even with the completion of the line into Bushwick, all did not run smoothly. In three days' time no less than four attempts were made to wreck the train by placing obstacles on the track; then on July 24 a torrential rain covered the track of the road with sand and water near Fresh Ponds and prevented service for half a day.
Laying of the rails into the ferry building was beset with difficulties. A sewer was being constructed along lower Broadway and the road was forced to wait till the work was done; in addition a horse car company operating on Union Avenue had been granted a terminus at South Eighth Street, and, as laid out, the railroad tracks and horse car rails would cross one another six times near Kent Avenue. To get out of this difficulty the South Side RR again appeared before the Common Council to exchange a portion of the two company's respective routes.
The permission to exchange track locations was easily forthcoming, but the Aldermen tacked on as a rider a prohibition against the use of T rail on Broadway, a right granted to the road in the earlier statute passed by the Council. Since part of the route was already laid with T rail, this eleventh-hour denial posed a new problem.
In the last days of September the tracks were laid through Boerum Street, and at the same time a large and commodious depot was going up at South Eighth Street. By the first week of November 1868, the work was almost completed; on November 4, Wednesday, the first train made the maiden trip through Brooklyn streets to the ferry terminus, eliminating at last the delay and inconvenience of changing cars at Bushwick. The South Side RR had at last reached the East River.
The South Side was not wholly satisfied with the new arrangement. Because the cars were drawn through Boerum Street and Broadway by horses, a train had to be broken up into individual cars, and a six-horse or eight-horse team attached to draw each coach to the ferry. In the railroad's view this process was cumbersome and increased the chances of accident. Using a steam dummy seemed the best solution.
Nothing quite like the old-fashioned steam dummy exists today; perhaps the closest modern analogy is the little diesel switcher popular in rail yards and freight terminals. In size the steam dummy resembled a small horse car of the period. It was very short with the conventional five or six windows and inside was a vertical steam boiler with a smokestack extending out through the roof. It had but four wheels driven directly by a piston and connecting rod from a small cylinder located near the front wheel. Because the engine was small and not very powerful, its smoke and cinder exhaust was small and hardly objectionable. Its chief advantage for the South Side RR was that it could haul a whole train of the frail wooden coaches of that period without the necessity of breaking up the train.
The use of steam through city streets necessitated another campaign of persuasion not only in the Brooklyn Common Council, but also in the State Legislature. Early in November 1868 the company applied to the Council for permission to experiment with a new dummy engine, to see whether the current models could draw cars on the grade along the eight blocks of South Eighth Street. The Brooklyn Times again took up the company's cause in its columns and urged the reasonableness of the idea.
A public hearing was called on December 3 and after much discussion, the use of a dummy was voted down. The chief objections were that steam engines were a threat to the safety of children, that they depreciated property, and created smoke. Most persons had no clear conception of the difference between a steam engine and a dummy, although company representatives stressed that the dummy's speed was only four to eight miles per hour and that seven to eight cars could be drawn at one time, and stopped within the dummy's own length.
When the Common Council met to consider the question, no remonstrance had been received from the property owners. The council members advised the road that if the company would substitute the groove rail for the present T rail, the matter might receive more favorable attention. Complaints had been received about wagons breaking axles. The railroad's representatives replied that an order had already been given to a Jersey factory for the grooved rails, but the order had not yet been filled. The Aldermen seemed dissatisfied at this and voted to leave the matter in abeyance till the rails were changed. On December 28 the matter was again brought up and permission at last given. The grant expressly stated that experimental trips only might be attempted on three days in January 1869, and as a further precaution, insisted that the engine be preceded by a horse with rider carrying a red flag; that bond against damages be executed, and that the T rail be eliminated at the earliest possible moment.
The South Side RR was not the first to try out steam dummies as a substitute for horse power. It had been tried intermittently on certain New York street car lines in 1864 (Second Avenue and Bleecker Street), in Philadelphia later, and in 1868 on Atlantic Avenue by the Atlantic Aye. RR Co. The New York & Hudson River RR was also using one on Eleventh Avenue in New York which the Brooklyn Aldermen themselves visited in January 1869. As a result of this visit the officials were very favorably impressed and renewed the South Side Rail Road's permission to test their engine in February, nothing having been done in January. In a burst of generosity they even withdrew the requirement to employ a horse and a red flag.
As soon as the permission was forthcoming, the South Side officials scouted around everywhere for a suitable dummy engine and found none for sale. As the weeks drifted by, it became necessary to place an order for an improved dummy with a firm in Jersey, and to petition the Common Council for an extension of time. With an eye to the future, the company also introduced a petition to the Assembly in Albany on March 11, praying for permission to use the dummy permanently in the streets of Brooklyn. On April 20 the bill was passed by the Assembly and referred to the Senate. Oliver Charlick of the Long Island RR and men of influence on the Long Island's Board of Directors were busy using every political connection they enjoyed to defeat the measure.
From a newspaper attack on the South Side RR in April led by a citizen of Williamsburgh, we learn that the company had failed to remove the T rail although it had promised to do so as soon as the frost was out of the ground. It was true that the new flat rails were stacked all along the curb in Boerum Street and Broadway, but no effort had been made to lay them. The writer bitterly denounced the double nuisance of T rail in the road and the obstruction to the sidewalk of the grooved rails; he pronounced the condition of lower Broadway so wretched between South Eighth and Boerum Streets that for eight or ten blocks the avenue was virtually closed to light carriages. The editor's comment did not disagree with these facts and expressed the hope that the South Side people would be stirred to action.
The letter must have been effective for during the first week of May the company removed a part of the T rails from Broadway and were installing the grooved rail to the pleasure and satisfaction of carriage drivers. The work proceeded at an irritatingly slow pace all during May and June and the discarded T rails lay in piles in the roadway, narrowing Broadway for wagon traffic.
Apparently the Senate Railroad Committee reported favorably on the dummy bill despite Charlick's machinations, for the company made ready all during June and July for the new dummy service. On Saturday July 31, 1869 a dummy made a trial trip at four P.M. along Boerum Street for the first time. It came down with four passenger cars and four freight cars. The trip took about ten minutes and closely observing the operation were President Fox and Superintendent White in one of the passenger cars. On Monday morning, August 2 the dummy began regular service hauling full trains back and forth. After a week of operation no accidents had occurred and no complaints lodged, moving the newspapers to comment on how groundless and old-maidish had been the fears of alarmists.