Interactive Map Test: Several Historic Points in Brooklyn

View Experiment: Transit Facilities in a full screen map

In the test below, I took some points along the 37th Street Corridor and Church Avenue and geocoded them. I then gave a description of the type of transit facility that was available. Thus at Church and McDonald, there is a subway station underground but this intersection had streetcar service until 1956. By moving west ( to the left ) on the map, you can see the remains of the historic railroad lines on the waterfront near 37-39th Streets.

PCC Car 1001 Aproaches Church and McDonald Avenues

http://www.davesrailpix.com/nyc/htm/bqt409.htm


  At this time, I am having trouble downloading pictures.  If you click on the shortcut above, you will see PCC car 1001 on the Number 50 McDonald Avenue route running southbound getting ready to cross Church Avenue.  This picture comes from the Dave Pirmann collection from Joe Testagrose.  If you look down the avenue, you will see a hill.  Situated on the hill was the old 9th Avenue Depot which was the home to some of the trolley lines in Brooklyn that were discussed in this blog.  This site, at 19th Street and 9th Avenue, was a two tier depot and I posted some track diagrams of lines going through the area.  The site is presently occupied by a religious high school and houses a big radio transmittal tower that can be seen for miles.  The white building on the right of the PCC car was the Greater New York Saving Bank.  The same site today is occupied by another bank and under the PCC car is the large Church Avenue IND Subway station that is presently served by "F" and "G" trains.  Click on the link above and you will see many goodies from all over.

The picture above was taken sometime between 1951 and 1956 when PCC cars ran on the line.

Does Rapid Transit follow the people or does it create communities?  In the map above, census data from the 2000 Census was applied against existing rapid transit routes, bus and subway.  The Church Avenue route is shown in red since it is the focus of many of my blogs.  It seems to the eye, that as we go away from areas of good rapid transit coverage, the population concentration drops.  Good candidates for streetcars would be areas that are far away from rapid transit but still have moderate to high concentration of population.  The Church Avenue route today as bus and the past as a trolley, always had good usage because the east end of the route is far away from the Nostand Avenue subway.  The census tract from the 1950's is not shown here so we really cannot compare 1956 (date of abandonment) and today.

Tramway Null(0)