If things went according to plan and the Fourth Avenue subway tunnel connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island, proposed in 1912, was actually built, would Staten Island have become as urban as the other four boroughs?
We’ll never know, because like so many other ideas tossed out by the MTA and its forerunners, this one got shelved.
Okay, it did get off the ground a little bit. In 1923, the Brooklyn Transit Company began digging a tunnel under Owl’s Head Park in Bay Ridge that would connect the Fourth Avenue line to Staten Island off St. George.
But 150 feet in, digging stopped due to lack of funds. A Staten Island-Bay Ridge subway link was again considered in 1929, part of the city’s plan for subway expansion (see color map above).
The Depression ended that. In the early 1960s, community leaders proposed adding subway tracks to the under-construction Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
But anti-mass transit Robert Moses, Triborough Bridge Authority boss at the time, wasn’t going to let that happen.
[Black and white map, above left, reveals the original 1912 tunnel plan]
Tags: Brooklyn-Staten Island subway tunnel, building the Triborough Bridge, New York City subway plans, Robert Moses, Staten Island subway tunnel, subway expansion, subway tunnel to Staten Island, tunnels never built in NYC, vintage subway maps
May 31, 2011 at 10:02 am |
But they do have a subway in Staten Island, rode it a few times in the 60s when I worked as a messenger. It was like an elevated Brooklyn subway train.
May 31, 2011 at 2:08 pm |
I’ve been on it a few times too. At some point halfway down the island, you feel like you’re on a small-town train line.
But if it connected to one of the main subway lines in Brooklyn a hundred years ago as planned, I wonder if Staten Island would have become more built up and congested.
May 31, 2011 at 2:25 pm |
but if it’s an el it’s not a subway. pedantic of me maybe, but i was confused by the idea of a subway on SI.
the SIRT used to have a north shore line, there is talk of resurrecting it as a light rail thing.
my first pictures with my first camera were of the ferry trip and the SIRT trip all the way to tottenville, which once was so remote that it made an appearance in “Sorry Wong Number” as a place where people could do secret things.
May 31, 2011 at 2:26 pm |
er, ‘Wong” is wong. should be “Wrong”.
May 31, 2011 at 2:28 pm
i’d like to correct that correction, should be “Wong”, not ‘Wong”. it’s decaf from now on.
June 2, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Ha, ha! You’re starting to sound like Kaos villain the Claw from “Get Smart.” ” I said craw! Not craw!”
May 31, 2011 at 2:32 pm |
I recall it rode by the beaches and it was very nice. I took it to the end of the line, Tottenville I recall that after all these years, walked around a bit then rode back. Nothing like being in NYC at all. Glad it never grew with the city.
May 31, 2011 at 2:37 pm |
I took it all the way down to pretty Tottenville too and it was lovely. But yes, above ground, not unlike the F train.
Tottenville was in Sorry Wrong Number? I’ll have to watch that again!
May 31, 2011 at 4:33 pm |
Robert Moses destroyed any possibility of it ever happening. He insisted the SI/Brooklyn crossing HAD TO be a bridge… so there was no subway connection. The tunnel in Bklyn was actually started ages ago, but stopped when funding was pulled. There is a stub of a tunnel under Bay Ridge Brooklyn and you can find it if you know your way around
May 31, 2011 at 4:34 pm |
…at least, that’s what a Bklyn friend told me once.
May 31, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Ooh, now I want to go out there and find it. Left-behind subway tunnels intrigue me.
June 1, 2011 at 3:28 am |
An improbable plan that may, as the sun sets on the automobile culture, give rise to new ideas. Thanks for digging up the forgotten vision of the unified city, and don’t be surprised to see a reconsideration of the whole thing.
Your first map depicted the second stage of the city-owned Independent Subway, and foresaw an ambitious, leading role for New York in demonstrating further possibilities of the subway. The 1939 plan was postponed due to the war, and thereafter yielded to one based upon high-speed, private transport. “Carland” was an expensive, frustrating mistake; in due time it will be recognized as such, and will require solution. If it is dismantled with energy and imagination, we may see the 1939 plan revived.
June 2, 2011 at 7:21 pm |
A similar plan to connect to SI by rail is under serious consideration, but from the Jersey side!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%E2%80%93Bergen_Light_Rail#Bayonne_Bridge