39th Street Brooklyn as shown by at ARCGIS 3-D Map

39 th Street in Brooklyn, is an interesting street that  is adjacent to many objects of transit , present and past.  The part from 9th Avenue to the Waterfront is very interesting because there is big change of elevation; not as much as San Francisco but still interesting.  It is interesting to stand at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 39th Street looking west to the waterfront.  Although I never visited San Francisco, I imagined what it would be like to be on a street with trolley tracks looking down a hilly street to the harbor.  After streetcar service ended in Brooklyn in October, 1956, I had many occasions in which I took the B-35 bus or walked along the street.  For many years, the tracks and wires remained after abandonment.  On one side of  the street, I believe the southern side, trolley support poles supported power cables for  the Culver Line (shuttle) until the 1980's when the el was dismantled.  Even though the Culver Shuttle stopped running in 1975, the power cables remained intact for many years.  The power cables supported by black iron trolley support poles gave a feeling of what the street was like during streetcar days.  These cables stretched from it's source at Fifth Avenue and 39th Street to the Ninth Avenue BMT station of the West End (B, D, W) and the Culver Shuttle.  The wires crossed the Ninth Avenue yard, went along the South Brooklyn RR right of way and were connected under the Culver Line El structure on 37th Street all the way to around Cortelyou Road.  On the right of 39th Street, from Ninth Avenue to around Third Avenue was the 37th Street Yard and South Brooklyn Railway.  This was very mysterious to a child with all the hidden and abandoned ramps and enclosures.  Before Google Maps and the vast increase of availability of transit pictures, who knew what was there?  Not many libraries in the past had extensive rapid transit collections.  And how would a ten year old access it?  Rapid Transit topics were not fashionable in those days and information was simply not available.

In the map above, the thin blue line is the West End Line subway serviice (D), leaving the Ninth Avenue Station and running through some historic, mysterious track right of way to Fourth Avenue where it makes a hard right onto Fourth Avenue.  To the right of the blue line is the 37th Street yard where there are various ramps and tunnels.  At the intersection of Fifth Avenue near 37th Street stood a historic train station for various late 19th Century- Early 20th Century railroads.

To be continued....

  In the late 19th Century, 39th Street was a well traveled street because at the waterfront, the 39th Street Ferry provided transportation to Manhattan.  It seems that the Brooklyn Bridge at that time could not handle all the traffic even though trains did cross the Brooklyn Bridge.    Because of the 39th Street Ferry,  various streetcar lines reached it including  our well liked Church Avenue Line.  In the area was the elevated station at 36th Street and 5th Avenue and various railheads to provide service eventually to Coney Island and various race tracks.