The Routes Not Taken Page 18
The direct connection with the Crosstown line didn’t survive the summer7 and the BOT didn’t formally announce a plan to build a Fulton Street subway line as part of the IND until March 31, 1927. There was no connection planned with the el in downtown or central Brooklyn. It would continue as a subway to Alabama Avenue in East New York. BOT Chief Engineer Robert Ridgway would investigate the routing of the subway east of that point. To the delight of many groups in Brooklyn, the only thing planned for the el was its demolition.
The question left open was what to do with the eastern extension of the line. Decades passed before it was answered. After considering ideas for building a subway along streets that included Atlantic and Liberty Avenues,8 Ridgway proposed that the subway line be connected with the el on Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park as part of the IND’s second phase plan in 1929. The major difference with what would later be built was that it would extend from Lefferts Boulevard, continuing eastward along Liberty Avenue through Richmond Hill South, Jamaica, and Hollis, connecting with an extended Jamaica Avenue elevated line and continuing to Springfield Boulevard in Queens Village. In May 1930, the plan for the route of the subway through East New York was set, running under Liberty Avenue, not making the connection with the el until reaching 80th Street.
That plan didn’t last long. Beginning with the BOT’s 1932 capital plan, the Fulton Street line was pointed toward southern Queens, with an extension to Rockaway Boulevard near the Brooklyn / Queens line. There would be a further extension, although it was not identified at the time.
Figure 6-2. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran this map diagramming a new plan for the Fulton Street subway on May 18, 1930.
IND service to Brooklyn began on February 1, 1933, with trains running along the Smith Street line to Bergen Street and then to Church Avenue in October.9 Construction work on the Fulton Street subway began. Financial considerations affected what the BOT could do to expand service. In a letter to Mayor La Guardia shortly after he took office in 1934, Chairman Delaney explained how funding problems affected the BOT’s ability to carry out capital work:
The work of construction and equipment of the new subway system is almost totally suspended because of the lack of money.
More than two thousand engineers, draftsmen and less skilled employees have been discharged during the last two years, and hundreds more must go.10
Delaney explained why city funding could be used for the capital projects that the BOT wanted to proceed with (extending the Fulton Street line to the Rockaway Avenue station in Brooklyn, and completing the Houston–Essex Street, Brooklyn–Queens Crosstown, and Queens Boulevard lines) and discussed where funding existed: “The only recourse apparent to me is a loan from the Federal Government. Application for such a loan amounting to about $23,000,000 [$386 million in 2011, according to MeasuringWorth.com] has been made and all the engineering preliminaries have been completed. This sum would enable the board to complete the structure and line equipment of unfinished portions of the new subway.”11
Speaking to the Brooklyn Civic Council on May 13, 1935, Delaney promised that the Fulton Street line would “eventually” be built into Queens, but again said the city had insufficient funds to do much. This condition was further exacerbated by the cost of merging the three subway systems.12 Negotiations had begun, but an agreement was still more than five years away.
The beginning of Fulton Street subway service on April 8, 1936, was marked by ceremonies at the Kismet Temple in Bedford–Stuyvesant and its terminal for the next twelve years, the Rockaway Avenue station. Mayor La Guardia was at the controls of the first train for a moment and then stood and rode on the trip to and from Rockaway Avenue from the Hoyt–Schermerhorn station. Once there, he promised to extend service to Queens without specifics: “We’ll extend this line to Queens and then tear down the Fulton Street Elevated as soon as we cut down red tape and eliminate bureaucracy and stubborn politics.”13
Demolishing an elevated line was a priority for area community groups, elected officials, and the Brooklyn Eagle. Herbert L. Carpenter, who chaired the Kismet Temple event, was one of the primary advocates for demolition, chairing a citywide committee for elevated-line demolition, seemingly regardless of whether these lines were still needed.
On July 15, 1937, the BOT submitted a plan to the Board of Estimate that included Route 110-B, an extension of the Fulton Street line from the yet-to-open Broadway–East New York station (opened in 1946) to Linden Boulevard at 101st Street in the Ozone Park section of Queens, via Pennsylvania Avenue and Linden Boulevard.14
A contract was signed in 1937 to conduct surveys along Fulton Street and Pennsylvania and Pitkin Avenues with the Meserole City Surveying Company. Although Route 110-B was the authorized plan, a second surveying contract was signed with Walter I. Browne Inc. to survey the area that would be needed to connect the Fulton Street subway and elevated line to the subway yard that would be built in the area. The BOT made contingency plans based on city finances.
The BOT’s capital construction plans for 1938 called for the Fulton Street line to be extended in two phases. It would initially be extended to Linden Boulevard and 106th Street, with a connection to the Long Island Rail Road’s Rockaway Beach line, which would be purchased from the LIRR. In the second phase, it would further extend along Linden Boulevard to 229th Street in Cambria Heights, close to the city line.
Fulton Street El service ended between Manhattan and Rockaway Avenue on May 31, 1940. A party led by Borough President John J. Cashmore boarded the last Manhattan-bound train at the Court Street station, rode to the Park Row Terminal, and then, joined by La Guardia, Delaney, and members of the City Council and the BOT, rode back to Rockaway Avenue.
Figure 6-3. The Fulton Street Extension as planned in 1938.
At Rockaway Avenue, about two thousand people heard the mayor tell them that demolition of the el would turn Fulton Street into “a splendid boulevard.”15 Earlier in the day, Herbert L. Carpenter led what was described as a “funeral procession” along the length of the route.16 A mock funeral was held at 5th Avenue and 25th Street in Sunset Park, in front of the entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery, to celebrate the end of the Fulton Street and 5th Avenue Els and the Broadway Ferry branch of the Broadway–Brooklyn line, which also ended service that day.17 Lost in the celebration was recognition of both the impact that the el had in developing the city and the services those lines provided.
The Fulton Street line’s extension was included in all BOT capital plans through 1945. Little construction work was done, though. The line wouldn’t be extended to the next station, Broadway–East New York, until December 30, 1946. The only short-range extension planned was to the Grant Avenue station, the last stop in Brooklyn. In its coverage of the opening, the Brooklyn Eagle noted that the extension to 229th Street was still in the BOT’s long-range plans, but it depended on resolving the city’s financial condition.
There was no further discussion of extensions to eastern Queens. When the next segment of the Fulton Street line opened on November 29, 1948, it was to the Euclid Avenue station. No mention was made of any extensions. When the BOT voted to extend the line on July 6, 1949, they had gone back to the plan to build the route proposed in 1929, a connection to the Fulton Street El line at the 80th Street–Hudson Street Station and running to the Lefferts Boulevard Terminal stop. The el segment west of the subway link would be demolished.
Figure 6-4. A page from the Brooklyn Eagle’s special section celebrating the end of service on the Fulton Street El in downtown Brooklyn on May 31, 1940.
The Board of Estimate approved this proposal on November 17. The only person to speak against it was Milton Jarrett of the City Line Civic Association (City Line was the name of the community on the Brooklyn / Queens border). Reading a letter written by Frank Lissner, the group’s president, to Mayor William O’Dwyer, Jarrett focused on the houses in his community near Liberty Avenue that would be demolished to build the tunnel portal and the structure linking the subway a
nd elevated lines. His alternative was to extend the subway under Pitkin Avenue to connect with the Rockaway Beach line, still being run by the LIRR, just to the west of Aqueduct Racetrack, part of the BOT’s plans from the 1930s and 1940s. This argument had no impact on the Board. Work on the connection proceeded and it opened for service on April 29, 1956. Four weeks later, the connection to the Rockaway Beach line opened, which was built from the el on Liberty Avenue.
The possibility of extending Fulton Street line service was raised again in 1963. The New York City Transit Authority proposed using a spur tunnel that runs off the Fulton Street line east of the Euclid Avenue station—where Route 110-B would have run, and where some think a longer tunnel exists—along Pitkin Avenue and Linden and Merrick Boulevards to Springfield Boulevard in southeastern Queens.18 Connections with the Rockaway line would be maintained by building a new transfer station where the new line and the Rockaway line met near Aqueduct Racetrack. As an alternative, the TA proposed extending the elevated line on Liberty Avenue to follow the route to Springfield Boulevard.19 The proposals received little comment and quickly faded away.
Construction of the Fulton Street subway in Brooklyn and the plans to extend it across Queens didn’t inspire the passion that other lines did. The main interest it stirred in Brooklyn was as a replacement for an elevated line that some viewed as being antiquated. The program for the opening ceremony at the Kismet Temple made as much note of the need for efforts to demolish the elevated structure as that for the new subway line itself. There wasn’t much interest in Queens because the area it would have served hadn’t yet been developed to the degree Brooklyn was. Extending the Queens Boulevard line and connecting the subway with the Long Island Rail Road’s Rockaway Beach line were much greater priorities in that borough.
The most interest in the proposals to extend the line came after the last proposal was issued in 1963. The interest was not on the part of civic and business groups or elected officials seeking to get a new subway line built; instead, it’s on the part of people who believe that something was built.
There is a school of thought among students of subway history and railfans that a tunnel was built eastward along Pitkin Avenue as far as 76th Street in Ozone Park, where a station was supposed to have been built.20 There are little clues that encourage this thinking. For instance, there is a board in the signal tower at the Euclid Avenue station showing part of this extension, including the 76th Street station. The spur tunnel that the TA proposed to use in 1963 is visible from the Fulton Street subway as it turns toward the Liberty Avenue connection.
Figure 6-5. Looking west on Pitkin Avenue from 76th Street. (Photo by the author)
There is absolutely no question that the BOT wanted to build the extension of the Fulton Street line to 229th Street, and would have if they had the financial resources to do so. There’s no doubt that preliminary engineering work took place. But that’s as far as things went.
The proposals to build the Burke Avenue and 10th Avenue lines provide testament. Elected officials like James J. Lyons or Edward Vogel objected to projects proceeding while work on their favored line didn’t. In 1938 Lyons tried to stop funding of the conversion of the Elks Club building at 110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn into the New York City Board of Education’s headquarters. While Lyons didn’t succeed, there is no doubt that he or the Bronx Home News would have protested had work on the Fulton Street extension gone on while work on Burke Avenue hadn’t. Vogel or the Brooklyn Eagle would have complained about this work starting and stopping while the Culver–Smith Street connection or the 10th Avenue line went unbuilt. Others would have protested on behalf of their communities. There are no reports of any protests having taken place.
Second, there was no coverage in any newspaper about work on a tunnel running from just east of Euclid Avenue to 76th Street having started, taking place, or stopping without completion. The subway system is filled with tunnel segments built to ensure that work would continue on a new line without disrupting existing service. This enabled the Archer Avenue line to be built in Queens decades later. It used track ramps from the Queens Boulevard line in the 1930s to facilitate later construction of a line to be built along Van Wyck Boulevard.
Tunnel segments for unbuilt second phase IND lines went only so far as to avoid interfering with the operation of the line in service while the new line was being built. They weren’t built to run from the Fulton Street line to Pitkin Avenue and 76th Street. Building a line between Euclid Avenue and 76th Street would have meant building a tunnel a little more than half a mile long.
If work started and stopped without comment by the city government or the BOT, without any promise that work would resume, there would have been an immense uproar from the elected officials and community and business groups representing the area where work had taken place. In the case of the Fulton Street line, there would have been significant coverage in the area newspapers, particularly the Brooklyn Eagle, the Long Island Star-Journal, and the Long Island Press. The Bronx Home News or New York Post would have complained about the money being wasted without the Burke Avenue or Tremont Avenue Crosstown lines being built. All of them advocated for expanding the subway system throughout their existence21 and condemned what they saw as wasteful spending. There were no articles or editorials of any kind about the Fulton Street line. If work took place, it would have happened in complete secrecy, which would have been impossible at any time on a project of this magnitude. There were no articles published about ground being broken for an extension.
Figure 6-6. This Brooklyn Eagle photograph from January 20, 1916, showed the Brooklyn Bridge ramp going toward the Chambers Street station.
More than three decades earlier, the Eagle protested a project’s abandonment. Work had started on a project connecting the BRT’s elevated lines running over the Brooklyn Bridge (including the Fulton Street El) with its lines on Nassau Street at the Chambers Street station. Work stopped and never resumed.22 The Eagle covered this in 1916. It’s hard to imagine the Eagle, the Press, or the Star-Journal not reporting the abandonment of a half-mile subway tunnel built out to 76th Street in the 1940s.
Another indication that nothing was built comes from a lack of subway infrastructure in the area of Pitkin Avenue and 76th Street. There are no pump rooms or anything else proving that subway construction had taken place. Southern Queens has a very high water table, a constant problem throughout that area. Without pumping facilities, it’s likely any tunnel under Pitkin Avenue would have long since caved in.
The final indication that no major work ever took place comes from the fact that no final authorization came from the BOT and the Board of Estimate. Communications from the BOT and the New York City Planning Commission in 1944 and 1945 indicated that the extension hadn’t been formally authorized under the terms of the New York State Rapid Transit Law up to that time. There is no record of this authorization ever having been given to do any work.
The public hearing for the project completing work at Euclid Avenue didn’t take place until September 21, 1945.23 The BOT was struggling to find funds to extend the Queens Boulevard line by one stop. They wanted to build the connection between that line and the 60th Street Tunnel, the Culver and Smith Street lines in Brooklyn, and the White Plains Road and Dyre Avenue lines in the Bronx. They still wanted to construct the 2nd Avenue line. These projects all had higher priority than extending the Fulton Street line to 76th Street and points east between the completion of work on Euclid Avenue and the Board of Estimate’s approval of the connection with the Fulton Street Elevated in 1949. It is difficult to imagine any other work on Fulton Street taking place, given the city’s financial concerns and the interest that existed in building these other lines in different parts of New York City.
Prior to the eastward extension of the Flushing line’s Main Street station in the 1990s, there was similar talk of a tunnel running beyond that station. When construction work began, all that was found was a lot of dirt and water, s
ewer, and utility lines that were missing from city maps. Having said all of this, it’s also obvious that the mystery of the tunnel to 76th Street won’t clear up until a major construction project requires extensive excavation along Pitkin Avenue. But that’s not likely to happen any time in the near future.
7
To the City Limits and Beyond
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s East Side Access (ESA) program is the most substantial expansion of New York’s commuter rail system since the Long Island Rail Road extended into Pennsylvania Station a century ago. Using the 63rd Street Tunnel’s lower level, trains will run from the Sunnyside Yards in Queens to a new station built at Grand Central Terminal. This is a new version of a route proposed in the MTA’s 1968 “New Routes” program, planned to run from 63rd Street to a terminal at 3rd Avenue and East 48th Street. The revised line will allow riders to transfer between the LIRR, subway, and Metro-North Commuter Railroad trains.1
The idea for ESA dates back generations. A number of proposals for commuter rail networks dwarfing it were made early in the twentieth century, creating systems connecting the routes serving New York, New Jersey, and the subway system.
William Gibbs McAdoo, president of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company (H&M), was a major advocate for creating an interstate network. Born in Cobb County, Georgia, McAdoo attended the University of Tennessee. Admitted to the bar in 1885, he set up a law practice in Chattanooga and became counsel to several railroad lines.
McAdoo’s work with the railroads piqued his interest. He bought a controlling interest in the Knoxville Street Railway Company, upgrading it and changing it from mule-driven to electric operation, a rare occurrence at the time.2
McAdoo moved to New York in 1902, forming a partnership with another William McAdoo, a former congressman from New Jersey, assistant secretary of the navy, and New York City police commissioner. He hadn’t lost interest in transportation, becoming involved with a dormant project to build a commuter rail line between New York and New Jersey.