The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part Two: The Flushing, North Shore & Central Railroad/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
The Central Railroad of Long Island
WHILE the Flushing & North Side R.R. was still in the building stage, events were taking place afar that would profoundly affect the history of the road. In New York City there had appeared on the commercial scene in the 1850's and 60's a merchant prince whose success and wealth had far outstripped his nearest rivals and whose business acumen was observed with awe and envy by all the mercantile magnates of his day. Alexander Turney Stewart was born near Belfast, Ireland, on December 12, 1803. His family was English Protestant stock that had emigrated to North Ireland generations before. When Alexander was but three days old, his father, a landowner of modest means, died, and a grandfather undertook his education, which was of the best, including Trinity College, Dublin. Just after the boy's sixteenth birthday his grandfather died, and he decided to come to America. For several years he lived an easy, scholarly life, reading for the most part and living on the income from his patrimony.
When Stewart turned twenty-one, he decided to return to Ireland to claim his inheritance and was advised by a commercial friend that he might double the amount by investing it in dress trim which had a ready market in New York. On his arrival in Ireland, he discovered that his patrimony had declined to $5,000, and he decided to invest this sum as his friend had advised. When he returned to New York, he went into business with his friend's help and he soon prospered in selling gloves, fans, trimmings, and, especially, laces.
In 1848 Stewart moved into a large store at Chambers Street and Broadway, and here he became well-known as a merchant prince. Fourteen years later, in 1862, he moved into the famous iron store at Broadway and Tenth Street. Stewart's store was the first large building to have an internal supporting structure of iron girders. The Stewart store in its heyday in the 1860's was the largest in the world; it had eight stories, six above ground, and two below ground, and employed 2,000 persons. Stewart's volume from his wholesale and retail business ran to $33 million per annum. In 1833 Stewart was already worth one and a half million; in 1860, twenty million.
In his personal life Stewart was pleasant and sociable. He patronized art and built a mansion at Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street to display it. Despite all his wealth and success, Stewart suffered one great deprivation—both his children had died in infancy and there was no one to inherit his fortune or to carry on his career. After he passed sixty, he began to look about for some worthwhile way of using his vast fortune. In 1869 that means at last presented itself.
Out on Long Island to the north and east of the old colonial village of Hempstead lay a vast tract, loosely referred to as the Hempstead Plains. Few roads crossed the area and only a handful of farmhouses interrupted the vast level treeless plain that extended mile on mile as far as Wantagh. The Town of Hempstead which had owned this vast virgin tract since the Revolution was approached in the spring of 1869 by a resident of Tarrytown with an offer to buy the entire area outright at $42 an acre. Stewart heard of the project, and there gradually formed in his mind a grandiose scheme. This was no less than to build on the plains a model city, carefully laid out according to a preconceived plan, and carefully supervised so as to insure the ultimate in beautiful environment, fine homes and desirable inhabitants. The city would be a modern form of feudal domain, wholly owned and operated by the lord of the manor, an idea suggested to Stewart by the great feudal estates of Northern Ireland familiar to him in his youth.
Once the idea was fixed in his mind, Stewart acted swiftly. A Town referendum on the sale of the plains was scheduled for July 17, 1869. Stewart sent in a bid to the astonished Town board of $55 an acre, with the promise of the investment of additional millions in roads, parks, houses, etc., all of which would give employment to armies of local residents for years to come. Agents were dispatched to Hempstead to do a little electioneering, but it was hardly necessary; the residents voted overwhelmingly to accept Stewart's bid. The decisive vote pleased everyone. The Town of Hempstead received the then unheard-of sum of $394,350 for land generally considered worthless, and this was invested to pay the school and welfare expenses of the Town for decades to come. Stewart obtained 7,170 acres and proceeded to buy another 1,500 from private individuals to round out the tract.
With his characteristic energy Stewart undertook immediately the development of this colossal tract, which extended from the New Hyde Park Road on the west to the borders of the Village of Farmingdale on the east; and from the Old Country Road on the north to the Hempstead village border on the south, measuring roughly ten miles in length by two miles in width. Stewart immediately contracted for 500 miles of wagon roads and appointed an engineer, John Kellum, to superintend the armies of workmen, who were grading roads, laying out parks and planting miles of shade trees. The new city was to be a residence for people in "moderate circumstances" and of "refined and cultivated tastes," and Stewart insured that his clientele would be limited to this group by erecting homes ranging in value from $5,000 to $15,000 on plots of at least an acre. In the summer of 1870 the first houses went up, while thirty carpenters put up fifteen miles of fences around blocks 600 × 1200 feet. By the end of the year Stewart had laid out 120 acres and had spent $4,000 a day for grading and fencing.
Not the least of Stewart's spectacular plans for his City of the Plains was the construction of a private railroad which would provide luxurious express service to New York for the residents of the city. Within two or three months of Stewart's purchase, preparations were made to build the so-called Stewart road. There was no problem in building a railroad along the plains since Stewart owned all the land. The big problem was how to provide his road with an outlook to the East River and the New York ferries. Building an entire new route to the water when there were already three operating systems on Long Island seemed wasteful to Stewart's shrewd business instincts, so he decided to sound out the Long Island R.R. and the Flushing & North Side R.R. as to their attitude toward a leasing or operating agreement.
By December 1869 the route of the Stewart road through the plains had been laid out by Mr. Kellum, and with the plans in his pocket, Stewart went to call on Oliver Charlick on December 6th. A stenographic record of the interview between these two great figures would make interesting reading today. Charlick, in his business dealings, was notoriously obdurate, and he lacked the flexibility to be able to appreciate and evaluate an opinion other than his own. No publicity was given to the interview, and neither one made any comment on the results, but the lack of any further contact soon gave strong reason to believe that Charlick had refused Stewart's offer to assume operation of the Stewart road. Speculation in the newspapers in January of a falling out with Charlick induced Stewart to issue a press statement denying difficulties with Charlick or any other railroad figure. In late January 1870 Mr. Stewart engaged surveyor Ezra Conklin of Jamaica to lay out three different routes for his road west of New Hyde Park Road, one of which he would select. On the east the terminus was to be Farmingdale village. Conklin reported back in March with one line into Flushing, a second into Jamaica, and a third south of Jamaica. The latter fired the residents of Woodhaven and East New York into public meetings urging Stewart to build through their villages. When a delegation from East New York called upon Stewart early in April, he showed signs of favoring the Flushing route above the other two. This probably resulted from a meeting in the first week of April with Conrad Poppenhusen and Elizur Hinsdale of the Flushing & North Side R.R., who had reportedly offered to sell out to Stewart the old New York & Flushing route between Main Street and Woodside. The Hempstead papers in May confirmed the Flushing rumor. During the summer of 1870 Mr. Stewart kept his own counsel as to his choice of route to the annoyance of the speculators, and contented himself with surveying the road on his plains domain. In October, Stewart set men to work on an extension of the New York & Hempstead Plains R.R. northward through his property to Mineola. This road, which had its terminus in Hempstead, was then being operated by the South Side R.R. and had opened service September 28, 1870, just three weeks earlier.
On December 3, 1870, a contract was awarded to Mr. Patrick Shields of Jamaica for building the new railroad between Farmingdale and the New Hyde Park Road. The contract called for a double track and was to be completed by April 1871. In the last days of December the news that everyone had been waiting to hear was released to the press: the Stewart road would adopt the Flushing route after all, connecting with the Flushing & North Side R.R. in or near Flushing village. Construction was to begin at once.
Reading between the lines of this announcement suggested that a still more important agreement had been concluded, namely, an understanding with Poppenhusen and Locke relative to trackage rights on the Flushing & North Side R.R. into Long Island City. When the text of the agreement was published in the press in January 1871, it was discovered to be more far-reaching than had been suspected. The Stewart road would be formally named the Central Railroad of Long Island and would be built to the same quality standards as the Flushing & North Side. A. T. Stewart agreed to finance a steel double track road within the boundaries of his purchase from Hyde Part to Farmingdale and would use the finest materials available. The date for completion was to be July 4, 1872. The Poppenhusens, for their part, agreed to build a steel double track road from Flushing to Hyde Park, and to double track their existing line to Hunter's Point. The contract also bound them to issue to every newcomer who intended to make his home in Garden City or Hempstead a free ticket over the road for one year. More important, the entire operation of the Central R.R. and its maintenance would be undertaken by the Flushing & North Side management under stipulated conditions, and at least fifteen trains would be run each way daily, with certain expresses scheduled to make the Hempstead run in thirty minutes.
This agreement of the thirty-first of December, 1870, was the most important and fateful moment in the history of the Flushing road; with the stroke of a pen, the Flushing & North Side suddenly became no longer a local road, but rather the base of a larger new railroad system big enough to challenge the old and established Long Island R.R. itself.
Both parties to the agreement set to work immediately to let contracts for building. John Kellum, Stewart's engineer, sent an order to the Prussian steel factories in Westphalia for 3,000 tons of steel rails, and gave to Mr. John C. Wright of Freeport the contract to grade the railroad right-of-way through the plains from Hyde Park to Farmingdale. The first ground was turned over in the Meadowbrook area east of Hempstead. A second group began work in the Hempstead Town cemetery grounds east of Franklin Avenue and along the present right-of-way in Garden City.
It now became necessary to determine the exact right-of-way between Hyde Park and Flushing; in February 1871 the Poppenhusens made overtures to the North Shore R.R. directors to branch off from their road somewhere near Broadway station, but this fell through. After a short time the final plans were drawn up and filed in the County Clerk's office on March 4, 1871.The new line diverged from the Flushing & North Side at the eastern end of the Main Street drawbridge and crossed south of Flushing village, through Kissena Park, and then southeast across country to Floral Park and New Hyde Park.
On March 7, 1871, Mr. John Higgins of Flushing, who did much of the work for the Flushing & North Side road, began work at Lawrence Street, Flushing, on the tunnel that would carry the tracks beneath that street. The tunnel was to be 160 feet long and 17 feet high, to be built of Greenwich stone in irregular rectangular bond work with neat facades and parapet walls at each end. In April all the contracts for the Central R.R. were let. Messrs. Smith and Ripley won the contract for grading the first half of the first section from Central Junction to Lawrence Street, and for a small section at Black Stump Road (Seventh-third Avenue); Messrs. Dunne and Lowther continued the work from Lawrence Street to 197th Street with eighty men and thirty-five horses; Messrs. Smith and Ripley from 197th Street through Rocky Hill to Winchester Boulevard, and Brian and Kingsley from Winchester Boulevard (old Alley Road) to the border of the Stewart property. They operated twenty carts. Messrs. Smith and Ripley originally had the contract for the entire road but decided to concentrate on the third section because of the large amount of grading and blasting necessary to break through the backbone of the island at Rocky Hill north of Hillside Avenue. Dunne and Lowther began work on April 17 on the Kissena Meadows and by mid-May their gang of 100 men had penetrated to Kissena Lake.
In May 1871 work was commenced in earnest at Rocky Hill (presently where Springfield Boulevard crosses Grand Central Parkway). The land at this point rises from forty to fifty feet above sea level to a mean elevation of 140 to 160 feet, much of it gravel of glacial origin. With the primitive earth-moving equipment of 1870 this ridge loomed as a formidable barrier to the railroad builders of that day. In June the contractors brought to the attack the most formidable artillery that had yet been seen on Long Island up to that date: two steam shovels, the first of their kind on Long Island, sixty dump cars, two locomotives and a portable track. It was planned to work at the Rocky Hill cut both day and night. The estimated time was three to four months. In July the first steam shovel went to work and the second followed in August.
The operations at Rocky Hill were so spectacular that people came from miles around just to watch. One hundred men were constantly at work and locomotives with trains of cars moved up and down on each side of the summit. Two miles of trestle work were built, one mile on each side, to create a grade of precisely fifty feet to the mile. The cost of the machinery on the Rocky Hill section alone was $50,000 and the expense of furnishing the water needed for men and locomotives ran to $30 a day.
While the heavy work of excavation was progressing at Rocky Hill, materials for track laying, etc., were beginning to arrive. In the third week of April, railroad ties by the schooner load began arriving at Hunter's Point. In June, the steamboat Artisan began unloading both ties and rails, the latter wrought iron with steel facing. By the end of June thousands of ties and thousands of steel rails lay stacked on the piers with more cargo constantly arriving. Immense quantities of stone were also being landed on Carll's dock in Flushing and on Sanger's dock on Alley Creek near the head of Little Neck Bay. In July arrangements were perfected between the South Side R.R. and the Central R.R. by which the iron and ties for New Hyde Park and Garden City through to Farmingdale should be transported over South Side rails. About August 1 a switch was laid between the Long Island R.R. and the Flushing & North Side at Winfield to transship rails and other material consigned to the Central R.R. without loading and unloading.
The building standards on the Central R.R. of L.I. were so high as to attract the attention of the public and railroad men alike. The most unusual feature was the almost entire elimination of grade crossings all along the line, and this on a road which traversed rural country almost exclusively. In Queens and Nassau Counties there were sixteen important roads crossed by the Central R.R., and all but three were planned to be crossed above or below grade. This added greatly to the cost of construction but added to the safety of the travelling public. The contracts for the stone work in all this bridging and tunneling amounted to $110,000, a sum which only a man like A. T. Stewart could pay without sober reflection. The crossings, to the extent that they are known, were planned as follows:
1 Lawrence Street, Flushing—Tunnel under road, actually built.
2. Fresh Meadow Road, Flushing—Tunnel under road, actually built.
3. Lawrence Lane (now Fiftieth Avenue) at 187th Street—A tunnel planned but never built.
4. Former North Hempstead Turnpike (at about Francis Lewis Boulevard)—Bridge planned but never built.
5. Hollis Court Boulevard (old Queens Avenue)—The old road formerly inside Cunningham Park has now been destroyed by the Clearview Expressway. Bridge planned over road but never built.
6. Seventy-third Avenue (old Black Stump Road)—Bridge planned but never built.
7. Old Granger Avenue—(Never fully laid out or opened; crossing about at present Bell Boulevard). Tunnel planned but never built.
8. Springfield Boulevard—Bridge over the railroad was built.
9. Jericho Turnpike—Iron bridge over the road was actually built.
10. Long Island R.R. crossing—Iron bridge over road actually built with heavy stone embankments.
In what has since become Nassau County, the other crossings were as follows:
11. Plainfield Avenue—Bridge over road planned, but never built.
12. Tanner's Pond Road—An iron bridge actually built.
13. Cherry Valley Road—Iron bridge actually built.
14. Road entering the Meadow Brook Club from the north (no longer existing)—Iron bridge built.
Two iron bridges were erected over Ireland Mill Creek, which drained Kissena Lake, and twenty small culverts at various points along the line.In the last week of July 1871 the Long Island R.R. began shipping the steel rails from Hunter's Point docks over the road to Mineola and then down the Branch to the Central's right-of-way at Garden City. All during August the ties were being laid and the rails distributed. The first rail on the plains section of the Central R.R. was laid Monday, October 30, near the L.I.R.R. Branch crossing and at two other points further eastward; the work was pushed hard in order to meet the contract deadline of December 1 for the plains section or incur a penalty of $250 a day. By December 23 three miles of the nine had been laid; the Langdon steam car, used in Flushing the year before, puffed up and down the right-of-way carrying ties and iron.
The hard work at Rocky Hill continued to the end of working weather in the late fall of 1871. By the end of August the two steam shovels had bitten deeply into the hill, and the locomotives were carrying off the dirt in trains of ten loaded cars at a time. When winter cut off all further work, the cut remained uncompleted. The last item of importance to be completed in the season of 1871 was the Lawrence Street tunnel in Flushing, finished on December 12th. The Rocky Hill cut then remained as the last remaining obstruction on the road.
It is of some historical interest to mention in passing that the season of 1871 also saw the founding and building of Stewart's great brick yards at Bethpage north of Farmingdale. By mid-September the first two of the great brick-making machines were in active operation, each capable of turning out 20,000 bricks daily. Two more were soon to be added, increasing the daily yield to 80,000 bricks. All these were scheduled for use in the erection of blocks of houses at Garden City. In November a very large brick stable and wagon house went up, and a shed for sheltering brick 462 × 60 also completed. An eighty-five horsepower steam engine powered the works, giving employment to thirty laborers.
During the winter of 1871–72 A. T. Stewart and Conrad Poppenhusen decided to enlarge the Central R.R. of L.I. beyond its original function of serving the Stewart purchase only; it was decided to extend southeast from Farmingdale to Babylon and the then fashionable watering place of Fire Island. A subsidiary, the Central Extension Railroad Company, was formally organized in 1871 to build the proposed road. There was a great deal of guessing on the part of the speculators as to the exact route of the line of road. A few miles to the southeast lay the booming village of Breslau, then being intensively advertised and developed. The leader of the development, Thomas Wellwood, had earlier approached engineer John Kellum to align the Babylon extension through Breslau, and had gotten some sort of oral commitment from him. As chief engineer, Kellum had established the exact right-of-way of the Central R.R. through the Stewart purchase, and he would again have the deciding voice in the routing of the Central Extension. Unfortunately for Wellwood and the whole Central R.R. project, John Kellum died suddenly on July 24, 1871,and with him went Wellwood's dream of a Breslau R.R.
In January 1872 all speculation was ended with the filing of the map of the Babylon Extension. The road, most of which is still operated today by the L.I.R.R., was laid out south of Farmingdale, crossing the pine barrens in a straight line to West Babylon, where it crossed the South Side R.R. tracks, and was to terminate at the Babylon Town dock, whence the boats left for Fire Island. The contract for building the road was awarded to Thomas Wellwood & Co. (in his capacity as a contractor) at $20,000 per mile; seventy-pound rail was to be laid on ties spaced two feet apart, and the grading to be completed by August 1, 1872. The residence of Jonathan Sammis on the east side of Fire Island Avenue and just north of the S-curve in that road, was purchased for the depot site.
With the return of good working weather in 1872 the Babylon extension project was temporarily shoved into the background and all efforts were concentrated on opening the graded road from Flushing at least through to Garden City and Hempstead. In March all the grading on the road was pushed through to completion, and on the twenty-second the long and expensive cut at Rocky Hill was completed by the meeting of the two steam shovels. The bridges were now ready to be installed across Queens County, and the steep sides of the Rocky Hill cut smoothed off. Iron for the spans was unloaded from freighters at Hunter's Point on March 29.
In the fine spring weather of April and May 1872 the track laying went on rapidly, the gangs sometimes making half a mile a day. By the last week of May only five miles remained to be done. In mid-June twenty small track-walkers' houses, each 17 × 24 feet and 2½ miles apart, were set up all along the line of the Central R.R. A round house was also being built at Central Junction station where the Central R.R. branched off from the Flushing & North Side.
On Monday, June 24, 1872, a construction train made the first through trip from Flushing to Garden City, testing the rails and bridges. All the communities along the line and indeed over the island eagerly looked forward to the opening of the new road with its superb roadbed, brand new equipment and shining promise. On Saturday, July 13, 1872, the crossing of the L.I.R.R. was made at Garden City without unpleasant incident, and the construction train was able to make the maiden trip the next day over the Central as far as Farmingdale. There had been rumors that Oliver Charlick would at the last moment resort to some strategem to delay the Stewart road, but this did not happen. An agreement had been made that the crossing should be done in a certain manner, and at such a time as not to interfere with travel. The lone engine on the L.I. Branch was called over to Mineola on business after the regular trains were in on Saturday night, and this gave rise to the rumor that they were watching the Stewart men. The crossing was laid late on Saturday night and a Central train passed over it to complete the legal formality of taking possession.
The spring of 1872 witnessed the construction and completion of the line into Hempstead. The right-of-way into Hempstead was projected through the farm of Daniel Sealey at the Garden City line, then through that of Sutton Lawrence, and then south to the depot site on Fulton Street. The depot was to be built adjoining the west property line of the Presbyterian Church, a site that would place it in the business center of the village.
During July the last parcels were acquired which were necessary to piece out the right-of-way into Hempstead. A Board of three Commissioners confirmed the condemnation awards, but in almost every case the railroad was able to conclude amicable agreements with the property owners, because of the general desire to see the road in operation. Sufficient property was purchased near Fulton Street to allow room for a turntable and engine house. During August the whole Branch was surveyed by Mr. D. Denton, assisted by Engineers Ebenezer Kellum Jr. and Samuel B. Mersereau Jr. The grading was done under the supervision of Mr. Lewis H. Cowles and the track work under Mr. G. W. Breas. Because of the shortness of the Branch, the laying of the track took very little time. One month later, on September 10, 1872, the track layers finished the line into Hempstead.
It is worth noting at this point that the right-of-way of 1872 in the vicinity of the present Garden City wye is not precisely the alignment of today. In Stewart's day the Branch left the through line at a point just east of the present wye and described a wide curve to the southeast to a point midway between the present Magnolia Street and Washington Avenue, Garden City. The track then curved back, crossing the present intersection of Garden and Magnolia Streets and joined the present right-of-way at Meadow Street. This old roadbed remained in use till 1893–4 when the building of the present West Hempstead Branch caused the realignment of the whole wye.
So confident was the Central R.R. management of immediate operation that the first timetable was issued in mid-August, announcing trains as of September 1. The day came and went and the date was then moved up to September 16. The initial timetable called for eight trains daily each way with through runs between Hempstead and Hunter's Point. The running time was set to vary from forty-two minutes to fifty-eight minutes, a shorter running time than that on the Long Island or South Side roads. The rate of fare for transient passengers was pegged at the same level as the two competing roads.
When September 16 arrived and still no trains were in evidence, people began to wonder aloud; a press release from A.T. Stewart himself explained that some defects had been observed in the construction of the bridges, and that he was withholding permission to open the road until everything was in order. Exasperating as these delays may have been, the time was not wholly wasted for work was moving slowly forward again on the Babylon extension. Since March 1872 the contractors for grading the line had been at work. Over the summer Mr. Wellwood of the Breslau project and Mr. Stewart had discussed three different routes to Babylon and Fire Island, and not until November were surveyors set to marking out the finally determined route.
Another point of progress during the long wait was the assembling and preparation of rolling stock. Three new engines, the Farmingdale, the Babylon and the Garden City, arrived during 1872 and sixteen new and elegant passenger coaches were delivered for service. Similarly, work on the stations made progress. In June the Hinsdale and Creedmoor stations went up; in October the engine house at Hempstead was finished and work on the brick depot began.
The fall months went by with no further announcements from the Central R.R. management; presumably, every last detail including the bridges was being checked before making any further statements. Then, very quietly at 10 P.M. on the evening of Tuesday, January 7, 1873, an hour when nearly all Hempstead had retired, a locomotive startled the village with the loud and unearthly screeching of its whistle and the glare of its headlight. The engine was seen to draw a string of dark cars through the frosty night into the unlit sepulchral precincts of Hempstead depot. Then all was again silent. At 6:30 the next morning, Wednesday, January 8, 1873, while it was still dark, and without any festive ceremony whatever, the engine Farmingdale pulled out with one car and two passengers, marking the first regular passenger trip on the Central Railroad of Long Island. As it grew light and word spread through the sleeping village, more persons drifted through the snow down to the Central depot, and took their first ride on the new Stewart road. The second trip at 7:45 A.M. carried thirteen passengers, and as the day wore on, better and better patronage developed.
Nine trains a day ran a through service between Hempstead and Hunter's Point. The stations on the first timetable in January were very few: Central Junction in Flushing, Creedmoor, Hinsdale, Garden City and Hempstead. During the first month of operation the cars were very well patronized, notwithstanding disagreeable winter weather. The handsome coaches elicited universal praise in every quarter.
Efforts were now made to finish the Bethpage Branch from the main line at Farmingdale to the brick works in the Bethpage Hills. In May 1872 the Bethpage Branch was surveyed to cross the L.I.R.R. main line a mile west of Farmingdale village. By July the brickworks had advanced so far as to deliver bricks to Stewart's main line in the vicinity of Jerusalem. These were hauled by team from the works, loaded onto freight cars, and carted to Garden City for the buildings going up on the plains there.
In December, the exact point of crossing of the Bethpage Branch with the L. I.R.R. was negotiated with Oliver Charlick, president of the L.1.R.R., and his directors. The Central Railroad's proposed line crossed the L.I.R.R. just west of Merritt Road, Farmingdale, and cut through a bank twenty-three feet high. The directors of the L.I.R.R. opposed the crossing on the ground that it would be dangerous to travel as the point selected was a curve located in a deep cut and with no visibility whatsoever. To settle the matter, the Supreme Court of Queens County appointed three commissioners to make a decision. In the meantime the Central R.R. installed two heavy culverts and two large bridges to expedite the work. In the first week of February 1873 the commissioners ordered the crossing point to be moved twenty feet to the east of Stewart's survey. On March 1 a brief strike interrupted the work on the branch; the contractors wanted the men to work for twelve hours a day at $2, but peace was restored with an offer of ten hours for $1.75. By mid-March, so anxious was the management to get the Bethpage Branch open, a night gang was put on the road in the expectation of finishing up in two weeks. The bricks were piling up in the yards in the millions and to ship these out was the reason for the haste. On March 28 the grading was finished and the contractors began laying the ties and rails. On Sunday morning, April 6, 1873, the installation of the frogs for crossing the Long Island R.R. about half a mile west of Farmingdale was successfully performed, after which one train of cars went over the road. President Oliver Charlick's men rushed to the spot in a great hurry to supervise the performance but were just ten minutes too late. During May the rails were laid to within half a mile of the yards and were to be finished as soon as the bolts for the joints were forwarded. Finally, in June, the Bethpage Branch was at last completed and the bricks began moving out to Garden City the next day.
Within three weeks the Central R.R. management had the satisfaction of opening the main line eastward as far as Bethpage Junction on May 26, 1873. This gave the inhabitants of Farmingdal seven trains a day, which contrasted noticeably with the two on the Long Island R.R. The people naturally patronized Stewart's road in preference to Charlick's, because of the fine appointments of the cars and the fact that Stewart charged only 65¢ compared with Charlick's 80¢. Even the village benefited, for, with railroad accommodation assured, every available house in Farmingdale was rented for the summer.
Once the Central R.R. of L.I. reached Babylon, all construction work on the road would be finished and the railroad would be complete as planned. To that end the directors now bent all their eports. In the last days of March 1873 Conrad Poppenhusen, in company with other railroad and real estate men, visited Babylon for the purpose of locating a depot there and settling other matters connected with the Babylon extension. The meadows along the east creek between the upper and lower docks were all bought up at $125 an acre for railroad purposes. In late April, twenty acres of land were purchased at the junction of Main Street (Merrick Road) and East Neck Road for depot purposes.
Grading all along the route was the first task facing the directors and the contract for this job was given to a Mr. Ryan in the first week of May 1873. The contract called for progress of at least one mile per week, and 200 men were to be put to work. By mid-July all the grading was complete and the iron laid to within two miles of Babylon. In the last week of July the grading gang was in sight of the terminus, and the iron had reached Mintern's Brook. On July 26 the track layers reached the South Side R.R., ready to install the crossing frogs.
The great day came on Friday August 1, when the firsttrain passed over the new track between 9 and 10 o'clock. In the afternoon service was initiated through from Hunter's Point to the Merrick Road with seven trains each way daily. A temporary depot was put into use at the southeast corner of the Merrick Road and East Neck Road on property purchased from William R. Foster. At this point the traveller boarded a "stage" for downtown Babylon, or for the steamer to Fire Island. Dropping passengers off at the Merrick Road was not the planned intention of the Central R.R. but merely a temporary expedient, so as not to lose the benefit of the remaining two months' excursion business in 1873.During September the company continued work on its remaining right-of-way and depot site in Babylon. On September 6 the land commissioners awarded $2,000 to William R. Foster for his land taken by the road. Meanwhile, the work of erecting a turntable, water tank and station building was pushed on. In mid-September the piling for the trestle over Carll's Creek was installed.
The depot site, located on the west side of Fire Island Avenue and extending through to Carll Avenue, occupied the present site of the houses numbered 158 and 164. The east face of the depot building looked out on the Watson house and grounds, a huge summer boarding house that had opened the previous season in May 1872. Both the depot and the right-of-way occupied a strip varying from sixty-six to 100 feet in width and running back 1,000 feet, all of which had been bought from Elbert Carll for $4,250. The station building itself was a wooden frame structure, 38 × 60, "thrown entirely over the tracks, with convenient waiting rooms, ticket and telegraph offices and a baggage room on the north side." Inside were comfortable benches trimmed in black walnut and ash. On the Fire Island and Carll Avenues fronts the legend "Babylon & Fire Island" was prominently emblazoned in blue and gold letters. High overhead a large red flag bearing the letters "Central R.R." waved in the breeze. Alongside the station stood a small engine house.
On October 18, 1873, the completed depot was opened to traffic. The road ran a gala excursion, wined and dined its guests across the street at the Watson House and then returned them to the city in the same decorated cars. Fire Island Avenue at that time was the most fashionable street in Babylon and lined with expensive homes and hotels. The sole horse car line in Suffolk County operated along this street between the South Side R.R. depot and the Town Dock, whence two steam launches made regular trips to Fire Island and its beach hotels. The Central, in June, 1874, connected its depot tracks with the horse car tracks in Fire Island Avenue so that the horse railroad baggage car could run alongside the Central baggage cars, and transfer baggage directly. At the same time the station platform was extended 100 feet, making 400 feet of platform in all. A large freight house, 23×32, with a platform 100 feet long and 10 feet wide, was also installed. {{nop]} With these fine new facilities completed and in use, the Central R.R. could now boast of a well-located terminal in an old and established village, and its directors understandably looked forward to a prosperous and profitable future.