The Routes Not Taken Read online

  The trunk line would cross southern Queens, meeting the Van Wyck Boulevard branch of the Queens Boulevard line as it ran along 120th Avenue, terminating in Cambria Heights at Springfield and Foch Boulevards (now Linden Boulevard). Many of the streets the trunk line would operate along were narrow. It is possible they would have been widened, turning into thoroughfares similar to the Grand Concourse or Queens Boulevard, thereby affecting the development of those areas.

  Figure 1-5. The map diagramming the routes in the 1929 plan for the second phase of the Independent Subway System. (Queensborough Magazine)

  The plan to elevate sections of proposed lines in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens elicited storms of opposition; the proposal to build the South Queens Trunk Line as a subway along Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood and Glendale did the same. “Myrtle Avenue means to Ridgewood what Fulton Street means to Brooklyn,” Martin Gehringer of the Manufacturers Trust Company said at a BOT hearing on February 17, 1930. “It would mean financial ruin to the merchants if a subway were to be constructed along Myrtle Avenue. The erection of the Fourteenth Street–Eastern District subway line along Wyckoff Avenue resulted in many failures of merchants on that avenue. With the present high rents and the loss of business, due to necessary obstructions in building[,] the subway conditions on Myrtle Avenue would be even more disastrous than those on Wyckoff Avenue.”24 Another speaker, Herman Gohlinghorst, opposed the line because construction would interfere with sewer trunk lines on that street.25

  Figure 1-6. A diagram of the East Broadway station on the 6th Avenue–Houston Street line showing the space left for the Worth Street line to pass through. (Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Archives)

  The 1929 plan was the only time that the BOT proposed building the full South 4th Street / South Queens Trunk Line. Components of the plan were included in BOT capital plans from 1938 and 1945. The Fresh Pond Road / Winfield line and the Crosstown line connection were never again proposed. The Houston Street and Worth Street lines continued to be proposed to connect with the Utica Avenue–Crosstown line. The South Queens segment would become part of the plans for the Fulton Street subway, which was slated to be connected with the Fulton Street El in the 1929 plan.

  Figure 1-7. The mezzanine of the Broadway station on the Brooklyn–Queens Crosstown line in Williamsburg was built to allow for transfers to the unbuilt South Queens Trunk Line. (Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Archives)

  This was also the only time extensions of the Jamaica Avenue and Fulton Street Els were contemplated by the BOT, instead of the Queens Boulevard line, something done in all their later plans through 1945. The Board proposed to extend and link the lines along two narrow streets, Hollis and Brinkerhoff Avenues, in eastern Queens. Beginning with its 1932 plan, the BOT proposed to extend the Queens Boulevard line along Hillside Avenue to Springfield Boulevard, and later proposed further extending it to Little Neck Road (now Parkway), a short distance from the city line.

  The Board proposed building an entirely new line to the Rockaway Peninsula in 1929, serving more of that area than did the Long Island Rail Road’s Rockaway Beach branch. The LIRR had made overtures to sell its line; the BOT and the Board made its interest in buying the line known a day after releasing its plan.26 Discussions between the BOT and LIRR continued while the Board tried implementing the second-phase plan. There was very strong interest on the Rockaway Peninsula for buying the LIRR line. Most of the two hundred speakers at the Board’s hearing on the Rockaway proposal on February 17, 1930, supported the purchase, so much so that Commissioner Daniel L. Ryan asked one of the speakers if he was speaking for the LIRR.27

  People in the Rockaways believed it would take less time and money to purchase the LIRR and connect it with the subway system than it would to build a new line. Their strong response may have affected the BOT. Commissioner Francis X. Sullivan told The Wave, the Rockaways’ weekly paper:

  You have the evidence that the Board is trying to give you relief. We have proposed a definite route; that was the first step. Next we held a hearing, which was the second step. Now the third step was taken by the injection of the Long Island Railroad purchase.

  We certainly shall investigate to determine the cost of this acquisition. That cost will be compared with the cost of paralleling the route as shown in our plan.28

  The BOT made acquisition of the Rockaway Beach line part of the capital plan that superseded the 1929 plan in February 1932. They filed plans to purchase the line with the Board of Estimate that December. The Board of Estimate voted to “put it on the rapid transit map for consideration,”29 but didn’t formally approve the purchase. This vote was taken in the waning days of the short-lived mayoralty of John P. O’Brien, elected to fill out the remainder of James J. Walker’s second term (a corruption scandal forced his resignation). It was intended to leave formal approval to the incoming mayor, Fiorello H. La Guardia.

  Planning was underway for the subway line connecting with the Rockaway Beach branch, designated Route 119-F. A spur line would connect it with the Queens Boulevard line’s local tracks in Rego Park, built with tunnel portals east of the 63rd Drive–Rego Park station. This rendered irrelevant some work that had already been done at the Roosevelt Avenue–Jackson Heights station for the line connecting with the South Queens Trunk Line, including construction of a third platform on the mezzanine level.30 The LIRR spent $500,000 to facilitate that connection from its end;31 the BOT would charge a fifteen-cent fare in the Rockaways to pay for the purchase of the Rockaway Beach branch and construction of the connection.

  Mayor La Guardia wanted the matter reconsidered. It was referred back to the BOT on March 23, 1934, just when it seemed that progress was being made. The financial burden was too great. Depression-era economics had affected the BOT’s ability to build anything.

  “For Rockaway transit, the city would have to spend $32,000,000 to buy the Rockaway Branch of the Long Island Railroad,” City Comptroller W. Arthur Cunningham told the Queens Borough Chamber of Commerce. “It would require an expenditure of an additional $15,000,000 for equipment for rapid transit operation of this line. I see no way for carrying out this project this year or next. It would not be practical for the city to own and operate this line under present conditions.”32 The BOT would continue to discuss purchasing the Rockaway Beach branch again, but more than twenty years would pass before it actually became part of a subway line, with a different link to the system than what initially had been discussed.

  The Board issued smaller capital plans in 1932 and 1937, reflecting the economy and reacting to the 1929 plan. Elevated lines weren’t discussed. Beginning in 1938 and continuing through 1952, when the New York City Transit Authority replaced it as the agency operating the transit system, the Board released a series of ambitious plans on an almost yearly basis—in three cases, twice in a year.

  The plans changed yearly, reflecting changes in priorities and political pressure. A route would be highly ranked, rise, fall, or disappear. The 1932 plan marked the start of when the BOT began active consideration of acquiring commuter rail lines for use as subway lines, which would have a major impact on the Northeast Bronx and the Rockaways. Because the Board experienced major difficulty in finding money for the IND’s first phase, little was done beyond planning work.

  With the first phase of the Queens Boulevard line apparently nearing its expected completion in 1936 (it actually had fifteen years to go), the La Guardia administration and the BOT considered what to do, particularly in Queens. The mayor issued proposals calling for the purchase of the Rockaway Beach line, express service on the Flushing line, extending that line to Bayside, extending the Queens Boulevard line to eastern Queens, and constructing the Van Wyck Boulevard extension of the Queens Boulevard line (with track ramps used a half-century later for the Archer Avenue line).33 La Guardia wanted the BOT to acquire the BMT’s Culver line in Brooklyn to connect with the IND’s Smith Street line, to connect the BMT’s Fulton Street elevated line in Queens with the Fulton
Street subway, and to acquire the Rockaway Beach line from the LIRR.34

  Figure 1-8. The map of the 1939 plan.

  This was a step toward the BOT’s later capital programs. It issued a new plan in 1937 and began to prioritize its proposals a year later. Its first priority in 1938 was finding a new home, taking advantage of properties where there had been demolition work in order to facilitate construction of the 6th and 8th Avenue subway lines. Chairman Delaney concluded a letter to the Board of Estimate introducing the 1938 list with caveats about financing these projects, points that would be repeated in similar form each year. He hedged the Board’s bets:

  This board is aware that the present financial resources of the City are not sufficient to permit the adoption at this time of any considerable part of this future program, but it is of the opinion that the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate should have before them a comprehensive outline of what this Board deems to be the most useful development of transit facilities during the coming years.

  These proposed projects are arranged generally in order of priority and upon the assumption that rapid transit unification will be effected in the near future. Changes in the City’s financial condition or in the volume of rapid transit travel, or delay in the consummation of unification, may cause this program to be amended during succeeding years, and therefore it should not be regarded as rigid and inflexible.35

  The BOT submitted plans without providing a financial strategy or expressing much desire to fight for them. It was a self-fulfilling prophesy of failure. In the years to come, Robert Moses would always have a plan for funding his proposals in place and was ready to do battle to achieve his goals, representing a major difference in mind-set.

  Between 1938 and 1945, the Board proposed building a line between Staten Island and Brooklyn. The 1938 and 1939 proposals differed sharply from previous plans, featuring a link with the 4th Avenue line south of the 59th Street station. A line was planned to meet with the IND’s Smith Street line near the Church Avenue station. This would allow trains to travel to Staten Island from the northern parts of the Bronx or eastern Queens via the 2nd, 6th, or 8th Avenue or Crosstown lines.

  This would bring subway service to Staten Island, but it’s questionable if riders would be happy. Trains would follow an indirect route requiring a much longer trip than would a connection with the 4th Avenue line. That concern may have occurred to the BOT, since the route they proposed from 1940 through 1945 restored the link with 4th Avenue.

  A second component of the Smith Street line extension remained after the Board returned to planning for a 4th Avenue–Staten Island connection. This was the 10th Avenue line, a route sought by groups in southwest Brooklyn for over a decade. As the 1929 plan evolved, the Allied Subway Campaign, representing a coalition of groups from that area, sought the construction of a line to fill the gap between the West End and 4th Avenue lines.

  The 10th Avenue line wasn’t a component of the 1929 plan, but the Allied Subway Campaign continued its efforts and the line was included in the BOT’s 1938 capital plan. Initially planned to branch away from the Staten Island line at Fort Hamilton Parkway and 65th Street and continue to 86th Street in Bay Ridge, it remained as a separate line from 1939 to 1945. One reason why was that it had a champion on the City Council, Edward Vogel, who represented southern Brooklyn on the Council from 1940 to 1960.

  Vogel and the Allied Subway Campaign wanted to break their subway service away from the bottleneck at the BMT’s DeKalb Avenue station. They wanted a connection with the IND, which was expanding into Brooklyn. One way was to connect the Smith Street and Culver lines. The Culver line, then a branch of the BMT’s West End line, couldn’t provide adequate service to his constituents (and it limited the number of trains that could run along the West End line). The other way to do that was building the 10th Avenue line. Vogel tried to accomplish both.

  He staged rallies in support of his cause and held a City Council hearing on October 15, 1940, to ask why the line wasn’t higher on the BOT’s priority list. In 1942, he put a motion before the Council to make scrap metal available to the City Council in exchange for prioritizing construction of the Culver–Smith Street line connection, which had slowed to a stop after ground had been broken for it on June 10, 1941.36

  Vogel’s efforts brought him into conflict with Bronx City Council Member Joseph Kinsley, who was advocating for an extension of the IND’s Concourse line into the Northeast Bronx via Burke Avenue. In 1940 Vogel proposed a resolution calling on the BOT to extend the Smith Street line to Coney Island via the Culver line. Kinsley accused him of having a “selfish attitude” and offered an amendment that would have given the Bronx “proper provision to meet its unification needs before Brooklyn could get a new subway.” The vote on Kinsley’s amendment, which was expanded to include Queens, produced a tie; City Council President A. Newbold Morris broke it, supporting Vogel.37

  Kinsley and Vogel clashed again in 1942 over a resolution calling for a scrap metal exchange benefitting the Culver line. While claiming to be one of Brooklyn’s “best friends,” Kinsley said the Council had given Brooklyn enough and the Bronx had been “short changed on transit lines in favor of other boroughs. I am unable to understand why the resolution should specify Brooklyn alone.”38 “Heaven help our good borough from our Bronx friends,” Vogel responded. He eventually got improved subway service for his area, but it wouldn’t happen until the 1950s, when the Smith Street and Culver lines were connected.

  Two capital plans were issued in 1942. The first, released on June 30, followed up on work that was underway or required immediate action. The second, sent to the City Planning Commission on July 28, was the 1944–48 Postwar Plan, establishing long-term goals for subway system expansion.

  While efforts to expand the subway system went on, other parts were contracting. Elevated lines ceased operation and were demolished in the eleven-year period between the extension of the Queens Boulevard line from the Union Turnpike–Kew Gardens station to the 169th Street station in 1937, and the Fulton Street subway between the Broadway–East New York (now Broadway Junction) and Euclid Avenue stations in 1948.

  In Manhattan, the 2nd Avenue and 6th Avenue Els were gone as was most of the 9th Avenue El. All that remained were the 3rd Avenue El and the section of the 9th Avenue El needed to link the Jerome Avenue line with the Polo Grounds in Manhattan and the New York Central Railroad’s Putnam branch in the Bronx. The BOT wanted a ten-block extension to link the Jerome and Lenox Avenue lines, but that never happened.

  In Brooklyn, the Fulton Street and 5th Avenue Els were gone; the Lexington Avenue El remained in service, but only until 1950. The elevated tracks that ran over the Brooklyn Bridge, connecting Lower Manhattan and the BMT’s network of lines, were removed. The tracks on the Queensboro Bridge connecting the Flushing and Astoria lines and the 2nd Avenue El service were gone.

  Some lines were redundant due to subway construction, but the els provided services that weren’t replaced. The remaining lines needed rehabilitation, but the BOT didn’t act. The lines deteriorated, leading to the conditions justifying demolition of the 3rd, Myrtle, and Lexington Avenue Els and the remainder of the 9th Avenue El. One of the reasons given for not building a connection between the 9th Avenue El and the Lenox Avenue line in the late 1950s, requiring the construction of a ten-block-long line, was that it cost too much to upgrade that small stretch of line to justify the work.39

  Two plans were again released in 1945. The first contained the BOT’s yearly priorities. The second, made public in August, the 1944–48 Postwar Plan’s successor, was as ambitious as the original. However, as postwar economic realities set in, the BOT’s plans were scaled back.

  As the Second World War drew to a close, the tenures of Fiorello La Guardia and John Delaney ended. La Guardia chose not to run for a fourth term in office. He expected the Republican, American Labor, and Fusion Parties, the coalition that elected him, to support Newbold Morris as his successor. The Republic
ans, joined by the Fusion and Liberal Parties, endorsed Jacob Goldstein, a judge with Democratic ties. The American Labor Party supported Brooklyn District Attorney William O’Dwyer, the Democratic candidate (O’Dwyer was the Democratic candidate against La Guardia in 1941). Morris refused to accept this, and with La Guardia’s support he formed the “No Deal” Party to continue his run. O’Dwyer won in a landslide.

  Delaney retired as BOT chairman on October 21, and La Guardia named Major General Charles P. Gross to replace him. Gross (1889–1975), a Brooklyn native, served in World War I with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, won a Purple Heart, and was chief of the Army Transportation Corps during World War II. At the same time, La Guardia also appointed City Collector William Reid to the Board.

  La Guardia expressed concerns about the transit system’s financial needs. The five-cent fare remained sacred, and the BOT’s debt load was growing. The mayor pointed out that a choice would have to be made—raise the fare or further overload the city’s budget. This would, in turn, affect the BOT’s abilities to finance the operation and further growth of the system.40

  Figure 1-9. Major General Charles P. Gross in 1943. (Brooklyn Eagle)

  When La Guardia swore Gross in on December 1, he said, “If you think war is hell, then you have something waiting for you on this job.”41 Gross knew that. Upon his appointment, Gross remarked, “New Yorkers will have to decide sooner or later the kind of subway that they want. I’ll do my best to give it to them.”42

  2

  Sound to Shore

  THE UNBUILT BROOKLYN–QUEENS CROSSTOWN LINE

  The Brooklyn–Queens Crosstown line was part of the IND’s first phase. Its first segment, between the Queens Plaza and Nassau Avenue stations, opened on August 19, 1933; the second, connecting with the Smith Street line at the Bergen Street station, opened on July 1, 1937.