From Texas to Brooklyn: Univ. of Texas Brooklyn 1913 Street Railway Maps

This informative map comes from the University of Texas at Austin's Map Room.

Perry-Castañeda Library
Map Collection

McGraw Electric Railway Manual Maps, 1913

The maps below are from "McGraw Electric Railway Manual: The Red Book of American Electric Railway Investments" (Edited by Frederic Nicholas). McGraw Publishing Company, Inc., New York City, 1913.

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 I took this map and georeferenced into my modern Brooklyn map with recent subway lines and stations using ARCGIS.  The resultant map shows 1913 Street Railway Routes and its' location near (as much as I could georeference) modern subway stops and stations.  Notice some interesting features:

1. The Brooklyn Race Tracks are still on the map.
2. The Coney Island Creek is quite extensive.

3. Notice a strange canal from near Nostrand Avenue near Newkirk to Bergen Beach.

  Please find below the original document from the University of Texas at Austin Map Archive.  It seems to show the proposed subway\elevated routes that were being built at the time (dual contracts).  Also note that in Southern Brooklyn, there are very few streetcar crosstown routes south of Church Avenue. Later on, the 16th Avenue and Cortelyou Road streetcar routes were combined to form the new trolleybus route number 23 that ran on Cortelyou Road from Flatbush Avenue and along 16th Avenue to New Utrecht Avenue and 62nd Street at the West End / Sea Beach subway stations and it was a crosstown route.  This area, which is almost found in one spot,  what I call an "optimal point" where at one point you have: 1)  West End BMT Lines on a Elevated Structure, 2) West End Trolley on the Surface, 3) Cortelyou Road Trolleybus Number 23 nearby with a loop, 4) Sea Beach Line New Utrecht Avenue Station below grade in a subway, and 5)  The Bay Ridge Division of the Long Island Railroad passing several hundred feet away.  I believe that 16th Avenue trolleybus service replaced the 16th Avenue Trolley which may have run via Gravesend Avenue and Church Avenue to Utica Avenue in either 1930 or 1932.  No other crosstown streetcar lines were built in this area even though the BMT corporation may have wanted to because the City of New York was probably against it.  Are there many spots in the world today, that if you point a stick vertically down, you have elevated railways on top, streetcars on the surface, crossed by trolleybus lines and subway / suburban services in a subway?  Perhaps in Germany and Switzerland you may find examples of these "optimal points".