October 11–17, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 15
Photo by Kevin Duggan
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End of the line
50th anniversary of elevated train’s
demise stirs memories of boro’s past
NYC
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By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
As 66-year-old For t
Greene resident Saleem Ali
strolls down Myrtle Avenue
on a warm October day, he
notices something missing
in the clear blue sky overhead,
and recalls a weathered
mass of steel, the sun
shining through slats of timber,
and the distant rumble
of an oncoming train.
It was loud and obtrusive,
but 50 years following
the Oct. 3 1969 final
voyage of an elevated train
line that once dominated
the Myrtle Avenue skyline,
Ali remembers a vital part
of Brooklyn’s past and an
iconic aspect of his own distant
youth.
“That was our landmark,”
said Ali. “For those of us
who grew up with it to see
it dismantled and disappear,
it was a part of us.”
The Myrtle “El” shuffled
straphangers for more than
80 years, during which its
quaint, wooden passenger
cars drove a wave of development
that spread from
the borough’s bustling industrial
waterfront eastward
through burgeoning
brownstone neighborhoods
and sheer on to the distant
frontier of Queens, according
to a transit historian.
“This was the beginning
of brownstone Brooklyn
growing up,” said Rob
DelBagno of the New York
Transit Museum. “The
El extended over time
east through what were
then fairly rural areas,
and Brooklyn developed
along there and industrial
Bushwick built up afterwards.”
The train line opened in
April 1888, five years after
Emily-Warren Roebling
became the first person to
cross the Brooklyn Bridge
— holding a rooster, no less
— and a decade before the
great mistake, when the vibrant
and independent port
city of Brooklyn was folded
into New York City as only
one of five boroughs, according
to the history
buff.
The Myrtle Avenue line
was powered by a heavy
steam engine, which drove
the elevated line from Adams
Street in America’s
Downtown through Fort
Greene and forward to
Grand Avenue in Clinton
Hill, before later expanding
further east into Bedford
Stuyvesant, Bushwick,
and finally into Queens.
The transition to electric
motors saw the line extended
once again around
the turn of the century,
this time northward over
(Above) Saleem Ali at
the remaining derelict
track of the old Myrlte El
at Lewis Avenue in Bedford
Stuyvesant. (Left)
Straphangers enjoy the
Myrtle El’s last ride in
1969.
Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum
(Top) The Myrtle El at the Washington Avenue station
in Clinton Hill in 1969. (Above) Demolition of
the Myrtle El tracks near Jay Street in Downtown
Brooklyn in 1970.
the Brooklyn Bridge and
into Manhattan, until 1944
when the line was shortened
back to Bridge and
Jay streets, according to
the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority.
But ridership started declining
in the 1930s because
of the Depression and because
of the opening of the
crosstown line which would
later become the G train, according
to the agency.
Elevated train lines were
coming down all over the
city during the mid-20th
century in favor of subways
and due to the increasing
popularity of the
automobile.
Around the same time,
the city’s master builder
Robert Moses erected the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway,
which tore through
many of the neighborhoods
near the Myrtle El.
In 1969, the recently
formed Metropolitan
Transportation Authority
— which took over the
trains and bus lines across
the city and state — studied
reinforcing the tracks
of the Myrtle El, to allow
for steel cars to run along
the line, which remained
the last line in North America
to still retain wooden
passenger cars, but transit
honchos decided against the
costly upgrade, according
to DelBagno.
“They figured they had
better ways to spend the
money,” the historian explained.
The agency ran the last
train on midnight on Oct.
3 1969 and demolished the
lines the next year, with
only a short stretch remaining
along what is now
the M train between Myrtle
Broadway Station and
Queens, along with a derelict
span of tracks which
juts out one block to Lewis
Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
which Borough President
Eric Adams has proposed
could be repurposed
in a similar fashion to Manhattan’s
High Line park .
The transit agency replaced
the El with the B54
bus along the corridor, but
a lot of the business suffered
from the lower foot
traffic afterward, according
Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum
to DelBagno, who said
the thoroughfare’s resurgence
as a vital commercial
strip is a fairly recent
occurrence.
“A lot of stores and restaurants
closed up because
their customers were gone,”
he said. “Myrtle Avenue
was a pretty vibrant shopping
avenue, a lot of that
disappeared.”
That comeback is once
again under threat, as the
agency plans to cut service
along the B54 and B38 routes,
which spurred local residents
and business owners to rally
earlier this month.
But as transit aficionados
gear up to celebrate
the 50th anniversary of the
death of the Myrtle Avenue
line and the wealth of
Brooklyn history it represents,
for Ali, it conjures
more personal memories of
childhood derring-do, and
he recalled scaling the elevated
rail’s metal columns
in search of fowl fit for the
pigeons coups.
“It was high up there, but
we took the chance and got
some eggs and young pigeons
and took them to the
coup,” said Ali.
Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum
A map from 1925 shows the Myrtle line, along with
other old elevated trains on Lexington Avenue and
Fulton Street.
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