470 Foot Tower Planned Next to Culver Line

Re: 470 Foot Tower next to Culver in Coney

Posted by Dan on Sat Aug 15 16:19:07 2015, in response to Re: 470 Foot Towet next to Culver in Coney, posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Thu Aug 13 17:00:12 2015. If a few more of these large scale apartment buildings are constructed along the Culver the MTA will have to consider restoring 'F' express service. This building alone could add 1000 riders to the 'F'. http://newyorkyimby.com/2015/08/revealed-532-neptune-avenue-coney-islands-future-tallest-building.html Hi Folks:   The above text from "Subchat" as posted by the sources shown.  It seems that a tall building is planned next to the Culver Line at Neptune Avenue.  This location is very rich in rapid transit history.  I have posted track maps of the area for the McDonald Avenue Line several years ago.  This in on the pathway of the historic Culver Line and you can see the elevated structure and station that dates from around 1919-20.  I have posted pictures of the trolley private right of way which was on the left side of the drawing above.    You are facing southeast at the Neptune Avenue station on the "F" train in Brooklyn.   You are seeing a northbound (Manhattan bound) "F" train just about to enter the station.  Many people are against development.    I do not know if this new building will add 1000 new riders to the F train but the building looks beautiful.  It is located where the former McDonald trolley made a sharp turn east on Shell Road on Neptune and turned south on  private right of way.  More to follow on this shortly. The community is very much against this project.  I do not live in this area so I will not give my opinion.  Just for the record,  along the historic path of the Culver Line, on McDonald Avenue and 37th Street, there were not to my knowledge, tall buildings.  You had the various developments in later years between Neptune-Van Sicklen and West 8th Street.  You had the Flatbush Terminal Bulding on 37th Street between 14th and 15th Avenues.  Of course, when the Culver Line used the 5th Avenue El  to reach the Brooklyn Bridge, the line passed talling buildings in Downtown Brooklyn.  And of course, when the Culver Line reached Manhattan via the BMT 4th Avenue Subway, the terminal at Chambers Street was at the base of a Wedding Cake type of skyscrapper (the Municipal Building).  In the drawing above, the tall buildings in the background are Co-Ops  built I believe in the early sixties.

McDonald Avenue PCC near Neptune Avenue - Part II

  In this posting, we will shift our focus slightly to the two deck elevated structure that I was telling you about in the prior post.  You got to see the photo below by Zach Summer which was taken on July 9, 2010 probably from the top level of the West 8th Street Station.  This is the next station that the elevated structure runs into from the previous post.  What a great shot!

A "Q" train of R160 cars are headed towards Manhattan and about to enter the West 8th Street station in Coney Island.  You can we what remains of the formerly great Coney Island amusement area.  The Cyclone  roller coaster ride is toward the left and so is the Atlantic Ocean.  Please go to http://www.nycsubway.org to see the rest of Zach's photos which concentrate on this area of Brooklyn.

In the picture below, from the George Conrad collection at the same website, a 1939 view of the easterly end of the West 8th Street station is shown where the  Culver Line swings out from beneath the two level elevated structure.  The picture above is from the top tier of the same station but facing south west while this picture is facing slightly south east.  On the lower tier,  a Culver-5th Avenue train of wooden elevated stock with gates are about to enter the West 8th Street Station on their trip to Stillwell Avenue- Coney Island.  On the upper level, a Brighton train of BMT Type D Triplexes are found.  According to what I can see, there are trolley tracks on both sides of the Culver Line structure.  I believe that by 1939, the Culver Line ran two services, subway service to Chambers Street using BMT Standard steel cars and wooden elevated cars to Sands Street or Park Row in Manhattan.

In this photo by Brian J. Cudahy in 1954, at the same website, a train of IND R-1-9 cars are headed towards the lower level of the West 8th Street station.  By this time, IND service to Coney Island was just a few months old.  A great snow shot.  We also see two of the trolley line support poles carrying the power source perhaps for the subway trains in the area.  I believe that the trolley PRW is towards the photographer's back.

Coney Island's Electric Bicyle Railway

This picture I got from a excellent website called "Forgotten New York" which contains all sorts of goodies, including streetlamps and forgotten streets.  In the area of Boynton Street, there seems to have been experiments with a monorail type of railway in the 19th Century in the Gravesend-Coney Island area very near to the Coney Island shops.  More to follow in the future.  There is a Boynton Street in the area named after the inventor/sponsor..
http://forgotten-ny.com/     This picture is also from the website:  Boynton Place and Avenue X is near the Avenue X stop on the Culver Line and is very near the entrance to the Coney Island Shops and Yards.  As it was stated elsewhere,  this area (Gravesend-Coney Island) is very rich in transportation history and it is only fitting that Boynton Place should be near a rapid transit facitlity, either a yard or a station.  Perhaps his experimental train ran through this very area?

Source of text below:   http://www.catskillarchive.com/

THE BOYNTON UNICYCLE RAILROAD.Scientific American, March 28, 1891
During several weeks last summer there were in regular and continuous operation, in railway passenger service, the locomotive and cars shown in the lower view herewith presented, the service being between Gravesend and Coney Island, on an abandoned section of an old standard gauge track of the Sea Beach and Brighton Railroad. The locomotive weighs nine tons, and has two 10 by 12 inch cylinders, the piston rods of both being Connected with cranks on each side the single six-foot driving wheel, and the front of the locomotive being also supported by two 38-inch pony wheels, one behind the other. These wheels have double flanges, to contact with either side of the track rail, as also have similarly arranged pairs of 38-inch wheels arranged under and housed in the floors near each end of the cars.

Norton's Pt and Sea Gate Line Trackmaps

Source: B. Linder, "Sea Gate Line" and "Norton's Point Line" in New York Division Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 2, February, 1978, pp. 2-5.

Note:  This lines have a complicated history.  Service was not always electric operated during the span of years of operation.  For example, the Norton's Pt Shuttle was bustituted in 1935 but cars came back during the war between June 7, 1943 and October 1943.  The Norton's Point Shuttle ran from West 37th Street to Norton's Point at the end of the land mass.

Theoretical Downhill Flood Flow in Southern Brooklyn and Sea Beach Line Open Cut

In the map below, I used GRASS 6.4.1 to bring in the "carve" file of river channels produced earlier based on the street elevation.  Remember in an earlier post, the program predicted a river flow along the open cut of the Sea Beach Line (N) between 86th Street and Avenue U.  Using this as a basis, I constructed a water flow diagram for southern Brooklyn.  What is surprising is that the water flow in the penciled area, along the open cut of the Sea Beach Line is from west to east and not south to north from the Coney Island Creek as expected.  Also notice that the horizontal flow near the Sea Beach Line is along the western side of the open cut.  I do not know if GRASS is incorrect in this projection or if I made a mistake in the settings. Notice the water flow in Coney Island where there was extensive flooding.  Correction:  The GRASS 6.4.1 hydrology program here creates a vector showing downhill flow on the surface elevation.  Since Hurricane Sandy was mainly a sea surge event and not a rain event. the minor downhill flow on the surface would not explain the flooding of the Sea Beach Line.  For this reason, the vector direction is perpendicular to the Sea Beach open cut.  The vectors do not show the direction of the sea surge.