Antenna at Former Ninth Avenue Streetcar Depot

    The former trolley depot in Park Slope Brooklyn, located between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and between 19th and 20th Streets was not only an historic depot but a huge one with two tiers.  It was active to the last day of trolley operations on October 31, 1956.  This was the beginning point of the Culver Line steam line in the 19th Century and its' location was shown on some of my posted track diagrams.  PCC research may have been conducted there in the 1930's.  Today the site is occupied by a Catholic High School that has a very tall radio transmission tower located just at the foot of McDonald Avenue.  This point is very high up on a hill and McDonald Avenue takes a plunge as it goes southward to Coney Island. It would be interesting to calculate the visibility from the top of the antenna, since the antenna is located on high ground itself.  The antenna is clearly visible from the Kings Highway elevated station on McDonald Avenue many miles to the south. Using GRASS 6.4.1, I produced a map showing the visibilty to the street surface if a person was perched on top of the antenna.  The problem is that I could not find the height of the antenna after a search on the web and I guessed that it was the same height as the Tech High School antenna at 597 feet but I may be wrong here.  The results indicate that the antenna is visible from many parts of Brooklyn and the surrounding region.  Look at the great  night photo of the antenna shown on the link below.  The former depot is at the center of the circle.  The two colored  rings indicate what street surfaces are visible from the top of the antenna using the guessed height.  Notice that the high hills of Staten Island block the view for Staten Island residents.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maiandy/4385724367/