The Routes Not Taken Read online

  The hearing continued on October 27. Brown again spoke, showing how bus service could replace elevated service. Charles V. Halley noted the lack of alternatives to elevated service: “I believe that before the Transit Commission gives the City the right to demolish these two elevated lines, which are admittedly antiquated and an eyesore, but still useful, some definite guarantee should be made as to a substitute for the people of the Bronx.”30

  Despite those objections, the Transit Commission approved demolition on February 21, 1940. George F. Mand of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce protested. “The decision of the of the Transit Commission as regards demolition of the Second and Ninth Avenue elevated structures is astounding and will meet with the general condemnation of the people of the Bronx,” Mand stated in a press release. “… They intend to crowd people into already overtaxed lines or otherwise inconvenience them. And why?”31

  The Board of Estimate took up the demolition plan. Despite a huge crowd of Bronx residents and businesspeople and members of the Transport Workers Union who showed up on March 14, 1940—not everyone could be admitted to City Hall—demolition was approved. Bronx Borough President James J. Lyons and Manhattan Borough President Stanley M. Isaacs cast the only dissenting votes after a public hearing that lasted more than five hours.

  The Bronx Chamber of Commerce and fifty affiliated groups took the demolition plan to court, but Justice Edward S. Dore of the State Appellate Division ruled against their application for an injunction on June 9. Mayor La Guardia personally began demolition on the uptown section of the 2nd Avenue El on February 17, 1941.

  The Board of Estimate voted to end service on the rest of the 2nd Avenue El on May 28, 1942. Bronx Borough President Lyons and Queens Borough President James A. Burke cast negative votes. Burke set off fireworks after Manhattan Borough President Edgar J. Nathan, Jr., said scrap metal from the elevated structure should be used as part of the national defense effort. Burke implied that scrap metal from the 6th Avenue Elevated line had been sold to Japan, which used it for military purposes.

  Burke wanted to continue 2nd Avenue El service over the Queensboro Bridge, where it connected with the Flushing and Astoria lines. He knew this was an important service to his constituents that wouldn’t be replaced if the el were demolished. A decade would pass before BOT proposals called for 2nd Avenue subway service into northern Queens.

  Burke was also protesting the point made that opposing demolition was unpatriotic since it kept scrap metal from being used for the war effort. It didn’t quite have the result he wanted. Stanley Isaacs, now a member of the City Council, protested. “I am going to inform the Borough President of Queens that at my request, when the contract for the demolition of the Sixth Avenue Elevated was considered in December, 1938, I asked the board to include in that contract a prohibition against the export of that metal,” Isaacs said. “First, because of a present loss to the city, there were alternate clauses put in that contract, but later at my assistance the contract provided that not one ounce of that steel could be exported to Japan or to any one else.”32

  “To my own personal knowledge, Mr. Isaacs stated the exact facts,” said Delaney. “I investigated them on behalf of the Board of Transportation, on the assertions that have been bandied about from one orator’s list to another. There never has been one pound shipped to Japan, of either the Sixth Avenue or any other elevated. All of it has been sold to our own local companies.”33

  Both Isaacs and Burke were correct. The BOT and city government hadn’t sold scrap metal from the 6th Avenue El to Japan or the other Axis powers—someone else had. Two years earlier, the Brooklyn Eagle investigated what happened to the 6th Avenue El’s steel. Borough President Isaacs’s resolution was in effect: the Harris Structural Steel Company, which did the demolition work, was restricted from selling the steel to a “foreign agency.” Accordingly, they sold it to the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.

  The Eagle contacted Bethlehem: “No effort had been made to keep the 6th Ave. elevated steel apart from other scrap, and that sheets, plates, bars and girders made from the combined converted metal had gone to various destinations. Japan and the European countries, which before the [British] blockade, included Germany, were among Bethlehem’s best export customers at the time.”34

  Isaacs called the Eagle’s article “misleading and inaccurate,”35 but said that while Harris Structural Steel lived up to the terms of the contract, once Bethlehem converted it to other forms for export, it could have gone to Japan or Germany for military purposes,36 which was the point of the article.

  When the Board of Estimate approved el demolition in Manhattan and Brooklyn on June 6, 1940, Isaacs again sought to bar export of the steel. Brooklyn Borough President John Cashmore offered a further amendment earmarking the scrap metal for sale to Great Britain and its allies. This resolution was enacted.

  Lyons’s and Burke’s arguments in 1942 came to naught, although Delaney admitted that “there is no doubt that the people in Queens are going to be inconvenienced.”37 Demolition began on July 7, 1942, and was completed on September 30. The structural steel from the els was recycled and used to construct the Grumman Aircraft Corporation’s plant in Bethpage, New York, and to build Grumman’s F6F “Hellcat” fighter airplane.38

  The fate of the scrap metal from the 6th Avenue El received further notoriety after e.e. cummings’s 1944 poem “plato told” was published (“it took a nipponized bit of the old sixth avenue el: in the top of his head: to tell him”). The use of the scrap metal from the other elevated lines in Manhattan and Brooklyn demolished in 1940 and 1942 has been forgotten or lumped in with what happened to the 6th Avenue El.

  Some derived huge benefits from the demolition of the elevated. Alexander Nobler Cohen wrote in Fallen Transit, his study of the 2nd Avenue El and subway, that “property owners prophesized that demolishing the El would lead to a surge in real estate activity and a revitalization of the neighborhood.”39

  2nd Avenue has changed, with high-rise office towers and apartment buildings replacing low-rise structures from Gramercy Park to East Harlem. The character of the retail properties changed as well. There was a spillover effect on adjoining streets, accelerating after the 3rd Avenue El service ended in 1955.

  But the 2nd Avenue El’s riders didn’t benefit. They had a longer walk to crowd onto the Lexington Avenue line. Demolition affected the entire transit system. The tracks on the Queensboro Bridge providing a connection for the Flushing and Astoria lines were gone as well. Burke’s and Lyons’s fears were correct. Removal of the tracks from the bridge removed access to the East Side that Queens riders need. It took operational flexibility away from both lines, now necessary with the huge growth in population in northwestern and northeastern Queens. It further overloaded the Lexington Avenue, Flushing, and Astoria lines.

  Cohen noted that customers of the elevated lines had little support. The First Avenue Association, professing to speak for the needs of the area, didn’t want to wait for the work on the subway to begin to demolish the el. State Senator Frederic René Coutert and Assembly Members Stephen J. Jarema and MacNeil Mitchell (two decades later, Mitchell, as a state senator, investigated what happened to funding ostensibly earmarked for the 2nd Avenue subway), representing the East Side in Albany, filed legislation facilitating demolition. Elected officials and civic and business groups from Queens and the Bronx wanted to save the 2nd Avenue El, but had little support from their colleagues and risked being called unpatriotic while the Second World War was in progress.

  With the nation’s resources devoted to fighting the war, the BOT had fewer resources to devote to subway expansion. All they could do was plan for when victory was achieved. In a letter to Louis Cohen, chair of the City Council’s Finance Committee, BOT Secretary William Jerome Daly had reported that while no funding was available for construction, they were planning for 2nd Avenue line service to the Bronx, running eastward along Lafayette and East Tremont Avenues to Throggs Neck, with connections to the Concourse
line at either 161st Street or Claremont Parkway, a connection to the Dyre Avenue line via a spur at Hunts Point Avenue and 173rd Street, or a connection to the Pelham line in Hunts Point.40

  In his annual message to the City Council on January 5, 1944, Mayor La Guardia said:

  The preparation of engineering plans for the Second Avenue Subway has not been interrupted. The work continues. The engineering plan entails an expenditure of $500,000 out of a total spent for engineering plans on the projects mentioned above [new rolling stock, platform lengthening, etc.] of $3,400,000. The plans for the first ten sections of the Second Avenue subway up to 125th Street will be ready by the end of this year. The plans will be available and ready when financial conditions permit. I do not anticipate that it will be in the immediate future. The total estimated cost of the Second Avenue line is $250,000,000 [$5.6 billion in 2011 dollars]. With extensions now under study, the total new system exceeds $360,000,000 [$8.16 billion in 2011 dollars].41

  2nd Avenue would become the key component of all capital plans. The BOT believed the primary need was for a new trunk line accommodating additional riders from the other boroughs instead of an outward extension of the subway system.

  The first postwar plan, issued in May 1942, was meant to be implemented between 1944 and 1948. The 2nd Avenue line would be built in two phases. The first, extending from Coenties Slip to the Bronx via 2nd Avenue to Water Street, received top priority. The Bronx routing wasn’t specified. The Brooklyn routing, connecting with the Fulton Street line, was ranked nineteenth on the Board’s list. In August 1944, BOT General Superintendent Philip E. Pheifer prepared a service plan to be implemented once 2nd Avenue and other improvements being proposed were completed. Pheifer’s plan called for a realignment of many IND and BMT lines, with at least fifty-six trains per hour operating along 2nd Avenue.42

  Figure 9-3. The 2nd Avenue line in a 1948 map. A branch route into northern Queens and a connection to the Concourse line in the Bronx would be added in subsequent years. (Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Archives)

  Pheifer also discussed a new connection to be built in Lower Manhattan. Links were planned between the 2nd Avenue, 6th Avenue–Houston Street, and Nassau Street lines, and the BMT trains crossing the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges.

  A second postwar plan was released in August 1945. The Manhattan routing was unchanged. A specific Bronx route was proposed, running along the borough’s southern shore to Harding Avenue in Throggs Neck. There was no Brooklyn route proposed, although the Board planned for service to that borough. Subsequent proposals built on Pheifer’s 1944 plan.

  Both William O’Dwyer, who succeeded Fiorello La Guardia as mayor in January 1946, and General Charles P. Gross, whom La Guardia appointed to replace John H. Delaney late in 1945, believed 2nd Avenue was the key component of any subway expansion plan, one of the few issues on which O’Dwyer and Gross agreed. Gross saw 2nd Avenue as necessary to relieve the overloading that the north–south lines were experiencing in Manhattan. He knew building the line was not possible without increasing BOT revenue, either through the farebox or tax subsidies.

  Mayor O’Dwyer would take the steps toward raising the fare to provide more revenue for the operation of the system, but he first looked to the state government for financial support and an exemption from the city’s debt limit to sell bonds to meet capital needs. He used a new subway expansion plan featuring 2nd Avenue as a selling point.

  The plan was the brainchild of Colonel Sidney H. Bingham, a longtime BOT and IRT engineer and planner O’Dwyer appointed to the Board.43 Released to the public on December 14, 1947, Bingham’s plan was the most ambitious proposal for 2nd Avenue. He called for a six-track line to run from Lower Manhattan to the Bronx. Expanding on Pheifer’s plan, he proposed the Chrystie Street connection, using three different East River crossings, the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges and the Montague Street Tunnel. It would establish connections with eight separate BMT branches serving Brooklyn and Queens, the 6th and 8th Avenue lines in Manhattan, and the Pelham line in the Bronx, which would be converted to an IND / BMT line, enabling more Lexington Avenue line trains to serve the White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, and Dyre Avenue lines.44 Like Pheifer did, Bingham prepared a service plan identifying the existing routes that would run along 2nd Avenue.45

  Bingham’s concept for 2nd Avenue had more connections with other lines than it had in previous plans. BOT Chairman William Reid46 discussed why so much emphasis was placed on that line. “The need for a new Second Avenue Subway has not been sufficiently emphasized,” Reid told the New York Times in 1948. “That line is not needed primarily to handle Manhattan traffic but to relieve the congestion caused by numerous feeder lines going into the older Manhattan lines.”

  “… What we really need is not more subway lines to serve the city’s outlying areas, but a new Manhattan line to absorb the feeders that pack into the existing Manhattan lines,” he continued. “The present situation is like taking four pipes ten inches in diameter and jamming them into one pipe ten inches in diameter. A new Second Avenue line is the answer to that.”47

  Figure 9-4. Colonel Sidney H. Bingham. (Yonkers Herald Statesman)

  Emphasis in transit planning had been consistent with Daniel L. Turner’s belief in extending the system ahead of population growth. The way Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx were growing justified that. But great strain had been placed on the system’s interior, the Manhattan trunk lines.

  Figure 9-5. A Board of Transportation diagram from 1949 showing the 2nd Avenue line plan. In subsequent years a branch line to Queens would be added.

  Financial constraints restricted the BOT. The city could borrow up to 10 percent of the average total assessed real estate value over the previous four years for capital projects. Mayor O’Dwyer sought an exemption from the state legislature to finance capital work. An amendment to the state constitution was needed, which required authorization by state voters in a referendum after being approved twice by the legislature. An initial vote failed in 1948, but it was approved in 1949 and 1950. It would go to the voters in 1951.

  On August 29, 1950, a hearing was held in the office of Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner, Jr., concerning a BOT proposal to demolish the section of the 3rd Avenue El between Chatham Square and the Battery. Bingham, who became BOT chairman in January after Reid became deputy mayor, said the structure was outdated and cost too much to upgrade. The BOT used their own inaction to maintain the infrastructure as an excuse for demolition. Staten Island Borough President Cornelius A. Hall and Council Member Isaacs opposed the proposal, citing its impact on their constituents due to the overcrowding of other subway lines. Another council member, Robert Weisberger, and Rev. Arthur G. Keane of the Roman Catholic Church of St. James spoke for demolition. Rev. Keane attacked demolition opponents, calling them people with “very beautiful sunburns and $100 suits.” He asked if they wanted “private cabs to their doors” for their ten-cent fare.48 The BOT and Board of Estimate agreed; 3rd Avenue El service to South Ferry ended on December 22.

  Two days after the hearing, Mayor O’Dwyer resigned to become ambassador to Mexico, and City Council President Vincent H. Impellitteri would be elected to serve the rest of his term. Impellitteri campaigned for the bond issue and the 2nd Avenue line. The next BOT capital plan was released on June 22, 1950, to be financed by the 1951 bond issue. The 2nd Avenue line was the lead item, with a branch to Queens from East 76th Street planned to use the Long Island Rail Road’s right-of-way to link up with either their Rockaway Beach or Port Washington lines.

  The city’s financial status continued to raise concerns for the BOT’s plans. Comptroller Lazarus Joseph warned against adding new debt, including the bonds authorized by the 1951 constitutional amendment. City Budget Director (and future comptroller and mayor) Abraham D. Beame stated that the city could allow for $235 million ($2.86 billion in 2011 dollars) to pay for all permanent capital improvements, but he thought financial issues needed to be dealt
with first.49 This allowed for work on smaller projects, but it affected projects like 2nd Avenue. Bingham said he would push for the allocation of funding above what Joseph and Beame said was available. It was questionable whether the Board of Estimate would authorize such expenditures, given the city’s financial concerns and the short-term needs of the system.

  The BOT final capital priority list in July 1952 called for eight routes and was approved by the Board of Estimate that fall. The main feature of these proposals was the latest iteration of the 2nd Avenue subway with the Chrystie Street connection. It also allowed for connections to the Concourse and Pelham lines in the Bronx and an option for further connections into Queens from Woodside.

  The expansion of the BMT’s DeKalb Avenue station and the rebuilding of the track and switches systems north and south of the station took priority over the rest of the line. This was crucial for the operation of BMT trains through downtown Brooklyn, as it resulted in easier movement of trains in and out of Brooklyn. Over the long term, it would facilitate movement through the Chrystie Street connection to 2nd Avenue, but it required the closing of the Myrtle Avenue station, the next stop north of DeKalb Avenue, one of several stations closures that took place in that era.50

  The ambitions of the summer of 1952 didn’t survive the fall. The BOT expressed concern over their ability to move ahead. There was, a Board spokesman told the Times, a shortage of engineers necessary to carry out design work: “Scores of these professional men have left [the BOT] for better paying posts in the outside business world. There may be some delays in our construction program if this outside competition continues.”51 The New York City Transit Authority became the agency operating the subway system after 1952 and continued to issue plans for the expansion of the subway system.