The Routes Not Taken Page 5

  Figure 2-4. The Queens Borough Chamber of Commerce ran this artist’s rendering of Queensboro Plaza in its January 1913 publication Queens Borough.

  Charles Ebbets, president of the Brooklyn Superbas, supported the Crosstown line. He went to Albany on March 26 to testify for legislation sponsored by State Senator Robert F. Wagner32 enabling construction of the line.33 Ebbets Field was being built in an area already served by public transit, within walking distance of two BRT stations, Prospect Park and Consumers Park (now the Botanic Gardens station). Once the Eastern Parkway line opened, it would be even more accessible. The ballpark was well served by the trolley lines crisscrossing Brooklyn, giving residents of Brooklyn the nickname “Trolley Dodgers” and his team one of its names (and the one it keeps to this day, though the franchise has moved to Los Angeles).34 Ebbets apparently did nothing more than lobby for a transit service that would allow easier access to his ballpark; he never issued a statement in response to James’s statement.

  Rev. John L. Belford of the Church of the Nativity struck a theme that recurs even now:

  In Manhattan they feel their cast off clothes are good enough for us; like the little fellow who has to have his clothes made over from his father’s. They don’t care how they feed us as long as they keep us clothed.

  But the minute you cross the river you find yourself in a different atmosphere. We feel in Brooklyn as part of a first class city—and Brooklyn was a first class city before it became affiliated with New York—that we are entitled to something other than to the method of rapid transit which is provided in the present subway scheme. Elevated railroads are not only unsightly and unsanitary, but a confounded nuisance as well.35

  The PSC held marathon hearings on the Dual Contract proposals in January 1913, giving the opportunity to many to speak for and against the overall plan and individual lines.

  One of them was New York City Magistrate John F. Hylan, five years away from being elected mayor. Hylan bore a grudge against the BRT, its successor (the BMT), and other rail lines. He worked his way through law school as a BRT engineer and was involved in an accident in 1897. Hylan was fired, despite protests that he had done nothing wrong (“They should have given me an award,” he complained to the New York Times in 1924).36 For the rest of his career, Hylan wanted to get even. It seems incredible today that a standing judge would speak in such a forum, but he had the chance to go after the BRT: “We are not going to stand supinely by and see these contracts rushed through to protect the interests of the BRT at the expense of the people of the city and particularly of the Borough of Brooklyn,”37 he said on January 14.

  Figure 2-5. The BRT ran this ad in support of the Crosstown line on March 24, 1912.

  Well over a thousand people attended the hearing on January 18 about the Crosstown line and the extensions of the Broadway–Brooklyn and Fulton Street Els into Queens. Most wanted to talk about the Crosstown line. The majority, led by Travis and Hylan, opposed the line being built as an elevated. Anyone favoring the BRT plan was subjected to boos and threats. PSC Chairman William R. Willcox summoned police officers to maintain order.

  Figure 2-6. Mayor John F. Hylan. (Wikimedia Commons)

  Hylan complained about both the overcrowding of the hearing room, doubting that everyone who wanted to speak would be heard, and the BRT’s outreach efforts: “These advertisements that we have seen in the newspapers and the car advertisements are nothing but frauds … it is going to be used by the advocates of the elevated line and that is important. I ask that that vote be taken again. It was a fraud, nothing else.”38

  Rev. W. W. W. Wilson of the DeKalb Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church spoke: “To run this road that has been planned would be to knock out five or six churches. Our property would be seriously damaged, if not ruined. I am for the city beautiful and even if this matter did not effect our parish in any way, I would be opposed to it.”39

  Rev. Cadman supported the Dual Contracts but opposed els: “This monstrous scheme would be a degradation to the community. This does not belong to the general scheme, and should not be allowed to disfigure it and disgrace it. [The BRT] needs to be watched.… Reject this plan and the great majority of all residents of Brooklyn will applaud your decision.”40

  The PSC was overwhelmed by the reaction to the proposal. The State Legislature was considering legislation filed by State Senator William B. Carswell and Assembly Member Harry B. Kornobis forbidding construction of elevated lines in Fort Greene and Bedford. The PSC removed the Crosstown line from the Dual Contracts on January 29. Colonel Williams accepted their decision without protest; he thought it was more important to get the BRT’s other lines built.41 A compromise would be sought.

  Figure 2-7. On May 25, 1912, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran this ad for the May 27 rally.

  The Carswell / Kornobis legislation was passed on February 25 with virtually no opposition. With Mayor Gaynor’s support, Governor Sulzer signed the bill into law on March 25.42

  The Crosstown Subway League held a banquet at the 23rd Regiment Armory on March 4 to honor the pastors who had led the fight. Dr. J. Richard Kevin addressed the feelings in the affected communities:

  Not long ago, the peace and serenity of this neighborhood was stirred by the attempted invasion of [the BRT] to destroy our homes, to desecrate our churches, to sever the ties of friendship, which were welded by the chains of years to disorganize a neighborhood which was built on the solid foundation of civic pride and loyalty.

  This naturally aroused a protest so strong and loud that its echo reverberated to every section of the city, and our state and city officials listened patiently to our demands and came to our rescue.43

  All the speakers promised to apply the energy given to opposing els to build a subway; planning began anew.

  A new route was announced early in 1914. It would run underground from the existing Franklin Avenue line through Bedford, as an elevated through Williamsburg, and underground through Greenpoint, becoming elevated again to cross Newtown Creek and Long Island City to connect with the Astoria and Flushing lines at Queensboro Plaza. The elevated structure at Queensboro Plaza would be built to allow for the connection.44

  PSC Chairman Edward McCall knew financing was a problem. “The financial condition of the city is the only barrier to immediate action on this crosstown route,” he said at a PSC hearing at City Hall on October 8, 1913. “Can we find an honorable way immediately to put this project in course of construction[?] That is the only issue that confronts us.”45 Similar statements came from the Board of Estimate’s Subway Committee. “Your committee is prepared to approve this plan,” George A. McAneny, now the Aldermanic president, told his colleagues on June 30, 1914. “But we wish to make it clear that the approval carries with it no promise of construction. It simply places the line on the map. Neither your committee nor the Public Service Commission is in a position to state when this line will be built.”46

  Despite McCall’s concerns, the PSC approved the line the next day without indicating when the line would be built or when the money needed to build it would be made available.

  There was a plan to build the line, and a will to build it. But there was no money. A plan was advanced to build the line by assessment, taxing the property owners along the route to finance construction, but that approach encountered opposition.47 The PSC wouldn’t divert funds from building the Nassau Street line in Manhattan. The BRT, once willing to build the elevated Crosstown line with its own funds, now gave greater priority to building an express track along the Fulton Street El and linking it with the 4th Avenue and Brighton Beach lines near the DeKalb Avenue station.48

  Building the Crosstown line became more difficult in 1917. Supported by Tammany Hall and William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, John F. Hylan defeated Mayor John Purroy Mitchel. Despite support for building the line, Hylan opposed any BRT effort to build new subways beyond the Dual Contract lines then under construction.

  The subway under Flatbush Avenue connecting the B
righton Beach line and 4th Avenue lines at DeKalb Avenue opened in 1920. The section of the Brighton line between Prospect Park and Fulton Street, planned to become part of the Crosstown line, remained in service as the Franklin Avenue Shuttle.

  Nothing was done beyond planning the lines that would follow the Dual Contracts. The Transit Construction Commission issued a plan during its short existence. The New York State Transit Commission, which succeeded them, came up with four separate proposals for the Crosstown line between May 1922 and August 1923. Mayor Hylan issued a proposal in August 1923.

  Figure 2-8. The Queens Borough Chamber of Commerce published this map in its 1920 publication Queens Borough, New York City, 1910–1920, showing the communities that could be reached were the Crosstown line built.

  Hylan wasn’t in a hurry to build IRT and BRT subways. He wanted a city-owned system. When the New York Times editorialized that New Yorkers wouldn’t care who built the subways as long as they were built quickly, the mayor responded with a letter to the editor: “If the New York Times and the traction interests [the IRT and BRT] think that they can force me into the ‘don’t care’ attitude, as they have done with other public officials, into spending millions of dollars of the people’s money and burdening them with more millions to be put into the budget every year for a continuance of the abominable transit service given to the people every day, they are barking up the wrong tree.”49

  The Transit Commission viewed Hylan as a hindrance to building subways. George McAneny, who became Transit Commission chairman, stated in 1922, “The Mayor’s plan for a new grouping of lines under municipal operation is built around his idea of recapturing the city owned sections of the dual subway. No decision could be made about the recapturable parts of the Interborough system until 1925, nor about the B.R.T. lines until 1926, in each case upon a year’s notice to the operating company. That means no real decision can be made until the city administration has gone out of office, and another takes its place.”50

  The Board of Estimate approved the initial plans for the Crosstown line and the 8th Avenue–Washington Heights line on August 3, 1923. No specific connection at either end of the line was discussed, just that it would run along Manhattan and Bedford Avenues in Brooklyn.

  While no BRT / BMT line was linked with the IND for three decades, the construction delay lived up to McAneny’s prediction. Groundbreaking for the 8th Avenue–Washington Heights line, the first IND line, didn’t take place until March 14, 1925, shortly before Mayor Hylan was defeated in the Democratic primary by James J. Walker. The line needed to survive further controversy before it was finally approved and construction would start.

  Hylan adamantly opposed the BMT (the reorganized BRT) operating any line. “A connection will tie up a $44,000,000 subway proposition with the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit corporation (formerly the B.R.T.) to be operated by that company,” he wrote to the members of the Board of Estimate. “Such a connection will provide nothing but deficits to be made up by the taxpayers, in the yearly budget, in addition to the $10,000,000 which the taxpayers are now forced to provide in the budget under the present subway contracts.”51

  Figure 2-9. George A. McAneny. (Wikimedia Commons)

  Hylan wanted the Crosstown line to be a “self-sustaining”52 spur of the 8th Avenue–Washington Heights or 6th Avenue lines across 23rd Street in Manhattan to Brooklyn, where it would run from Greenpoint to Coney Island. Shortly after the letter went out, the State Legislature enacted legislation creating the Board of Transportation, giving Hylan control over the transit process by appointing its members.

  The mayor wrote to BOT Chairman John H. Delaney opposing private operation of the Crosstown line:

  The transit lines and their professional propagandists [Hylan referred to the Brooklyn Eagle, the New York World, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and other groups critical of city-operated transit lines] know that you are working on a subway line in the neighborhood of Sixth Avenue, New York, connecting there with the new Washington Heights–Sixth Avenue line, running to and through Greenpoint and across town in Brooklyn to the Flatbush and Coney Island sections of Brooklyn. They know that this line will be laid out to give the maximum of service to the people and not merely to continue the monopoly control of the present grasping traction operators.

  The Brooklyn Eagle and Chamber of Commerce headed by [Arthur S.] Somers, who is a director of the B.M.T., are continually harping on a crosstown line and endeavoring to lead the people to believe that without them that they would never get any improvement in transit, whereas their suggestions, if carried out, would result in nothing more that the perpetuation of the present private transit monopoly in the City of New York.53

  Somers responded: “Mayor Hylan, now in his seventh year as Mayor, won his election to give more and better subways to Brooklyn and Manhattan. He has significantly failed to keep his campaign promises.… Now another year has passed and the action promised by the Board of Estimate last August has been nullified. Mayor Hylan, in a recent letter, announced new subway plans which will mean a continuing delay.”54

  The BOT announced its Crosstown line plan in January 1925. Eschewing Hylan’s call for a connection with the 6th Avenue line at 23rd Street, it wanted a link with the Queens Boulevard line and the 53rd Street Tunnel at Van Alst Avenue (now 21st Street) and Nott Avenue (now 44th Drive) in Long Island City, which would run along Manhattan, Union, Throop and Gates Avenues in Brooklyn to connect with the planned Fulton Street subway. It wouldn’t run south of Fulton Street.

  Brooklyn Borough President Joseph A. Guider and Queens Borough President Maurice E. Connolly opposed the plan at the Board of Estimate in June. Guider wanted to revive the BRT’s Sound to Shore plan and the Tri-Borough Plan’s Lafayette Avenue line. Connolly didn’t think Queens benefited sufficiently. “The routes which your Board of Transportation proposes for Brooklyn will not do at all,” Guider said. “We in Brooklyn feel that the Board of Transportation has not given us the needed relief. I have alternate proposals and must insist that they be thoroughly considered.… Look at what Mr. Delaney suggests for Brooklyn. He shows that he does not know his territory very well. His plan does not meet the plan of my borough and is impractical.”55

  “The Brooklyn Borough President is misinformed if he thinks I do not know my Brooklyn,” Delaney responded. “I have lived there for twenty-seven years and we have selected the best possible route for the borough.… Let me tell you men that if you want subways you’ve got to get busy and take some action. You can’t procrastinate forever.”56

  The Board of Estimate discussed the IND on July 1. Hylan surprised Delaney by supporting Guider. Plans for other IND lines were approved; Hylan moved that the Crosstown line “be disapproved and sent back to the Board of Transportation with suggestions by the Borough President of Brooklyn for the purpose of further study and consideration.”57 The BOT was almost back to square one. When the Crosstown line was again discussed, a new mayor, James J. Walker, was in office.

  The Board of Estimate met to consider the 53rd Street line on February 5, 1926, connecting the 8th and 6th Avenue and Queens Boulevard lines in Manhattan. The northern leg of the Crosstown line would link with it in Long Island City. When Lawson H. Brown of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce protested that his borough was shortchanged in the IND planning process, Guider reassured him: “I am satisfied with the way things are going. We will get our share. No one need worry about that.”58 Mayor Walker promised the same thing.

  Borough President Guider died on September 22 from a peritonitis infection resulting from a burst appendix. His successor, James J. Byrne, sought accord with the BOT. Delaney outlined the compromise route, the Crosstown line we now know, on April 6, 1927, in the Brooklyn Eagle:

  [The Crosstown line] will start from the heart of Queens and run across Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Central Brooklyn to Boro Hall [the Hoyt–Schermerhorn Street station, a few blocks from Borough Hall], where it will connect up with the South Brooklyn line along Smith
Street. This in turn, eventually will run into and absorb the recapturable Culver line to Coney Island.

  On this line there will be transfer points established at L.I. City for the 53rd Street tube, at the intersection of the 14th Street line [at the Metropolitan Avenue–Grand Street station] and at Borough Hall for trains bound to Manhattan.59

  Delaney was asked what happened to the BOT’s original plans, to which he responded, “This plan was opposed by the late Borough President Guider and rejected by the Board of Estimate which compelled me to revise the plans.… The present plan, which we have finally approved—will connect the Crosstown line with the local service in Queens Boulevard so that it will run to Long Island City. It will be actually a Brooklyn–Queens line.”60 The BOT announced its plans on July 16, 1927, acknowledging the impact of the Guider’s plan:

  Lafayette Avenue was the street indicated by the borough authorities as being the more desirable thoroughfare in effecting more rapid transit service by the shorter route to the Borough Hall section of Brooklyn and giving greater convenience to the territory intended to be served. While the Board of Transportation does not depart from the reasons which originally controlled in the presentation to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, viz. Union, Throop and Gates avenues, it believes that the use of Lafayette Avenue is now proper in view of the fact that there is presented simultaneously the proposed route and general plan for the Fulton Street line to East New York.61