The Routes Not Taken Page 24

  Lyons feared that “or other suitable facilities” would divert funds for Burke Avenue to projects outside the Bronx: “I do not think that the people of the Northeast Bronx should be deluded by the inclusion of any indefinite and ambiguous clause as ‘or any suitable facility’ with the possibility of jeopardizing all transit facilities for the Northeast Bronx.”105

  The Board of Estimate approved the budget on November 30 without amendment. Lyons voted against it, criticizing “people who were vociferous on behalf of the Burke Avenue subway extension until recently, when they became strongly vociferous in switching to the Westchester and Boston.”106 He made a motion to change “or other suitable facility” to an item funding the W&B’s purchase. Only Queens Borough President Harvey supported him.

  The debate carried over to the City Council’s December 11 capital budget hearing. Keegan wanted the phrase deleted from Burke Avenue’s budget item. He didn’t want the money used for the W&B:

  Along the Burke Avenue route, assessed values have been raised in the expectation of an extension being built from the Concourse subway. Property owners up there have been paying these increased assessments for almost 16 years. A condition has now arisen in which a certain group of people desire that the City acquire the W and B, a defunct railroad.

  While the people I represent do not wish to deprive their neighbors of transit, they insist that this railroad not be acquired at the expense of the Burke Avenue subway, and even if the City plans to do it by this means, it cannot legally do so.107

  Kinsley reiterated La Guardia’s comments. There was little possibility of the Burke Avenue line being built; converting the W&B for rapid transit could be easily accomplished. Johnston stated that using the W&B would benefit more people than would the Burke Avenue plan. Representatives of the Westchester towns served by the W&B wanted their part of the line reactivated with a rail service linking with the subway at Dyre Avenue. McGoldrick and Delaney met with the town officials on December 20, promising cooperation.

  January 1, 1940, was the second anniversary of the end of W&B service. Knox wanted resolution and Moses wanted to build the highway. Time was running out. Knox extended the deadline for one week on January 5, providing the impetus to make a deal. At a conference of the Board of Trade attended by Kinsley, Mand, Stephens, Holton, and Maskell E. Fox, La Guardia announced an agreement for the area between 174th Street and Dyre Avenue. If the city wanted the tracks to Hunts Point to connect with other lines, a separate deal needed to be reached with the New Haven Railroad, which never happened.

  The money came from Burke Avenue’s funds. La Guardia said that the city wanted to build the line, but the cost, which he put at $16 million ($489 million in 2011 dollars, according to MeasuringWorth.com), and time needed to complete it, made the purchase more viable. The contract restoring rail service to the Northeast Bronx was signed on January 9. There was no direct connection to another subway line (and wouldn’t be for seventeen years), requiring riders to transfer to the White Plains Road line at East 180th Street. A separate fare would be charged to transfer between lines.

  Keegan objected to the extra fare; he felt it whittled away at the five-cent fare.108 Johnston wrote to Morris on January 17:

  It is needless to say that the great number of people living along the line of the railroad are elated at the prospect of rapid transit being restored to the Northeast Bronx.… It may be enlightening to you that I have yet to talk to a person in our neighborhood that has expressed the slightest objection to paying an extra five cent fare for a limited period of time to facilitate rapid transit service. We are entirely antagonistic to Mr. Keegan’s recently published threat against a ten cent fare. We understand Mr. Keegan’s motives fairly well.109

  The W&B purchase went to the Board of Estimate on February 6 without specifying a connection: “The operation will be by means of a shuttle service between the Dyre Avenue station at the northern end of the route, and the 180th Street station, at the southern end of the route, for some period of time, until it is deemed to authorize and construct another route southerly to a physical connection with an existing or new rapid transit line.”110 As the subway system hadn’t yet been unified, the line would be part of the IND.

  Halley warned about budget priorities: “Millions of dollars of Federal funds are spent on airports and highways, but not one cent for rapid transit facilities.”111 The Home News, concerned about White Plains Road line congestion after Dyre Avenue service started, asked the city to acquire the rest of the W&B’s Bronx tracks to connect with the Pelham or other lines.112 Paul Trapani wrote to the mayor on March 4 for the Burke Avenue Property Owners and Businessmen’s Association:

  As we stated to you before, we do not object to the purchase of the Westchester and Boston railroad by the City, but, not at the expense of another delay on the start of construction of the Burke Avenue subway. This is the third time that this subway extension has been included in the capital outlay budget and the third time that much needed transportation project has been postponed and funds diverted.

  We still feel that the only solution for the transit problem for the Northeast Bronx is the Burke Avenue Subway Extension, more so now, with the demolition of the 2nd Avenue Elevated a reality and with the operation of the Westchester and Boston Railroad. Both will add considerably to the congested Lexington Avenue Line.

  We ask you to reconsider before it is too late. We ask you to investigate the present overcrowding and slowing up of I.R.T. trains during rush hours, because of the inability of those lines to absorb additional trains.113

  The Board of Estimate approved the purchase on March 7. Lyons abstained, citing the additional fare. Michael Moses spoke for the Burke Avenue Property Owners and Businessmen’s Association: “[The Board of Estimate] voted to extend the Concourse Subway along Burke Avenue. We celebrated that fact and even had a victory dinner, thinking that a 25-year campaign had at last been accomplished. Now we are offered a broken-down, abandoned railroad which few of us can use and we are expected to be content. I tell you, gentlemen, that we want subways and we will fight this matter to the finish.”114

  “Like many others in the Bronx, I would like to see a subway built but the fact remains that the money for this line is not available an even if it were, it would take at least six years to build,” Kinsley said. “With the transit situation in the Bronx in the deplorable state that it is, the valid question, it would seem to me is how soon transit service can be installed.”115

  Johnston said the extra fare was less than what W&B riders had paid; he hoped a connection could be built in five years. Lyons vowed to continue to advocate for the Burke Avenue line, believing that both it and Dyre Avenue were needed. No one knew it would take another seventeen years to connect the Dyre Avenue to with another subway line. With the town and city governments in Westchester still fighting for W&B service, Judge Knox granted another extension.116

  Delaney and Dohr signed the agreement to purchase the line for $1,785,000 ($28.6 million in 2011 dollars) in McGoldrick’s office on April 17. Equipment and trains from the 9th Avenue El would be used. Efforts continued for Burke Avenue. On June 22 the City Council passed Keegan’s resolution asking the BOT and the Board of Estimate to include funding for Burke Avenue in the 1941 capital outlay budget.

  Figure 8-4. The Bronx Home News published this map on January 7, 1940, to explain the possible connections that could be made with the New York, Westchester, and Boston Railway’s right-of-way.

  The CPC sent the 1941 capital budget to the Board of Estimate and the City Council in November without mentioning the Concourse Extension. Sheridan was the lone voice against it. Protests came from along Burke Avenue and the area’s elected officials. Another meeting was held on November 14 at Evander Childs High School, sponsored by the Bronx Division of the Community Council of New York. The Civic Council members organized the meeting to ensure the largest possible turnout when the capital outlay budget went before the Board of Estimate.

>   Hyman Bravin, an attorney from the Hillside Houses, chaired the meeting, stating that the W&B’s purchase and the opening of the Dyre Avenue line did nothing for their area. Lillian Britton of the Allied Civic Associations pledged her group’s support. A resolution was passed calling for work to continue on Burke Avenue: “The City Administration’s present position that the re-opening of the New York, Westchester and Boston right-of-way will provide ample transit facilities for our section of the Bronx is untenable and indicative of bad faith.”117

  The City Council passed the capital budget on December 28 without funding Burke Avenue. Mayor La Guardia gave his report on the city’s budget to the City Council on January 8, 1941, without mentioning the line.

  The Burke Avenue Property Owners and Businessmen’s Association met in February at the old Burke Mansion. Bravin announced plans to send representatives to all civic association meetings in the North Bronx to solicit their support and read a letter to his group from Newbold Morris, who had encouraging words this time: “It is hoped that under municipal operation [of the transit system] sufficient savings can be made so that more tax revenues can be used for the financing of such important projects as the Burke Avenue extension.”118

  There are no reports of Robert Moses’s reaction to not being able to use the W&B’s right-of-way to build a highway. Did he lose interest once John Delaney said the BOT wanted it, moving on to his next option, what became the New England Thruway? A 1940 report issued by Moses’s Triborough Bridge Authority, Vital Gaps in New York Metropolitan Arteries, didn’t mention the highway.

  But there are hints that he remembered. Lyons experienced significant problems in getting public housing built in the Bronx after the end of World War II. He had to fight Moses, also the city construction coordinator, to get anything built. Could Moses’s methods in building the Cross Bronx Expressway, his unwillingness to change its route and its subsequent impact on the Bronx, be traced to his reaction to his losing the W&B’s right-of-way?

  The New England Thruway opened in 1958 on a different route, years after it might have had the original highway been built. Possibly coincidentally, but definitely symbolically, the last exit before leaving the Bronx points toward the intersection of Boston Road and Connor Street, where Herman W. Johnston—one of the leaders of the Allied Civic Associations of Old Eastchester, the main proponents of the conversion of the W&B’s right-of-way into a subway line and among the main opponents of the Express Truck Highway—once lived.119

  The Bronx’s focus shifted to the paid transfer issue. The city government and BOT wanted to charge the extra fare until a connection was built between the Dyre Avenue line and another subway line, which the BOT said would happen in another five years. It was not until May 6, nine days before Dyre Avenue service began, that La Guardia and the BOT relented; the free transfer was adopted on May 13.

  The first train ran from Dyre Avenue at 11:25 A.M. on May 15. Unlike the quiet circumstances marking the start of Concourse line service, there was a ceremony at the Church of the Blessed Nativity on Secor Place, at which La Guardia, Lyons, and Delaney spoke, followed by a parade from Breinlinger’s Hall to the Dyre Avenue station attended by thousands of people.120 A block party was held that evening.

  Mayor La Guardia received many expressions of gratitude for the opening of the Dyre Avenue line and the elimination of the second fare. He said that it “makes up for some of the kicking around we get at other times.”121 When New Rochelle Mayor Stanley Church sought rail service from Dyre Avenue into Westchester, La Guardia wasn’t encouraging: “I have all that I can do to clean streets of New York city, and I can’t run Westchester.”122 While Westchester bus service ran to the Dyre and Baychester Avenue stations and the New Haven provided more service on its routes, the W&B’s service into Westchester was never replaced.

  Figure 8-5. The Mount Vernon Daily Argus ran this picture of the Dyre Avenue line’s opening ceremonies on May 16, 1941.

  Halley said there was still much to do, questioning why subways were built in Queens but not along the Burke and Tremont Avenue lines. He called on Mayor La Guardia to obtain federal funding. Kinsley and a new colleague, Louis Cohen, succeeded in getting their resolution calling on the BOT to provide funding for Burke Avenue. The city had a budget surplus of $2,113,745 ($32.3 million in 2011 dollars), which the Council Members wanted to use to provide funding for the line.

  The BOT ranked Burke Avenue twelfth out of twenty-seven items on their 1941 capital priority list. The Jerome Avenue–Lenox Avenue connection was second on the list. A connection between the Dyre Avenue and Pelham lines (using more of the W&B’s right-of-way) ranked eleventh, one ahead of Burke Avenue. The BOT believed there was only an urgent need to build the first five lines on the list.123

  This didn’t sit well with Burke Avenue’s strongest advocates. Lyons vowed to fight to get the line funded. Mand called on the various Bronx groups to unite to speak out to obtain more service for the borough. Nonetheless, it was the last time the BOT took action on Burke Avenue.

  On October 22 the CPC held a hearing on the 1942 capital budget, which didn’t include Burke Avenue. Lyons and other Bronx representatives spoke for the line. Kinsley talked about how Parkchester was built without thought of the area’s overall needs. He discussed the Northeast and East Bronx’s transit needs with Delaney, and received only a promise that the BOT would investigate. Sheridan blamed Burke Avenue’s absence on the W&B purchase: “Neither the Board of Transportation nor any City agency originally favored the acquisition of the New York, Westchester and Boston subway route as a substitute for the Burke Avenue subway. However, organized pressure from the section in question forced the purchase of the defunct facility. Desirable though it may have seemed to some, it was obvious to public officials generally and to most persons that the reorganization and use of the Westchester and Boston route would indefinitely postpone, if not prevent, the construction of the Burke Avenue [line].”124

  Despite Lyons’s protest, the Board of Estimate approved the capital outlay budget on December 4. Three days later, America was at war, and action on many capital projects became less of a concern.

  Final victory was years away in May 1942. Most of the battles that turned the tide hadn’t been fought, but the city was already planning projects and programs to be implemented after the war’s end. This resulted in the BOT’s 1944–48 Postwar Plan. It was very ambitious, with a projected cost of $905 million,125 but without mention of Burke Avenue.

  Reaction was quick. The Burke Avenue Subway Extension Committee stated, “When this war is over, we of the North Bronx will remind the members of this Commission of their obligations to the people of the North Bronx.”126 Chief Engineer Thomas B. Dwyer stressed the need for the extension of the Concourse line and other Bronx lines. Lyons continued to lobby for the inclusion of Burke Avenue and other transit services for the borough in the city’s plans without success.

  “A sterile, complacent, non-Bronx or anti-Bronx Board of Transportation has completely failed to indicate any interest or display any vision in considering the dire need of new transit facilities for the East Bronx, the North Bronx or the West Bronx,” Lyons later complained. “The present Board of Transportation seems to feel that when the Bronx obtained the makeshift Boston and Westchester they got all they were entitled to and all they are going to get.”127

  During the war there was little funding available for capital projects. Some Burke Avenue advocates, like Keegan and Bravin, were in military service. A few continued the fight for the line at home. Lyons wrote to Delaney in the summer of 1943, asking him about its status in light of its omission from the 1944–48 Postwar Plan. Delaney replied on September 3, “The Burke Avenue Extension is legally alive, but its status or condition may be reasonably diagnosed as a state of suspended animation.… The route and general plan of construction adopted in 1937 will continue [to be] valid indefinitely unless the Board of Estimate’s resolution of approval should be repealed or modified at some f
uture time.”128

  “Suspended animation” was usually seen in comic books. It gave the borough president another opportunity to sound off on the effect of “or other suitable facilities”: “I am happy to say that I vigorously opposed this amendment and voted against it. I predicted that it meant the demise of the badly needed Burke Avenue extension of the Concourse line.… Subsequently the Bronx was given the makeshift Bronx and Westchester elevated service which appears to be the death knell of the Burke Avenue extension.”129

  The Bronx Joint Committee, representing thirty-eight civic associations across the borough, met at the Board of Trade’s offices in November 1943. Intending to discuss the need for highway projects, they spent most of the time considering rapid transit projects. The Burke Avenue line was a priority, but other lines were discussed, including the 2nd Avenue line, the Tremont Avenue Crosstown line, and the Jerome Avenue–Lenox Avenue connection.130

  Their plan, issued on January 12, 1944, called for Burke Avenue to be linked with the 2nd Avenue subway, extending from Manhattan via Alexander, 3rd, Melrose, Washington, and Webster Avenues, across Bronx Park, and along Burke Avenue and Gun Hill Road to Kingsland and Bartow Avenues. Burke Avenue was not the Committee’s priority. Their priority was starting work on the 2nd Avenue subway,131 which was a story in itself.

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