ICYMI: PART ONE
A Vintage Bus and the Real Manhattan Transfers
NYC Surface/Bus Transfers circa 1945-1948
Courtesy Lohn Landers Collection
NYC Surface/Bus Transfers circa 1945-1948
Courtesy Lohn Landers Collection
I scantly remember the last days of the Myrtle Avenue El (lasting through the mid 1970s), back when the now demolished Cascade Company building at Marcy Avenue was still operating at full steam. Today it is clear where the transit system truncated the line just off the Broadway El at Marcus Garvey Blvd. The photo featured below once hung in the Cascade Company lobby. I showed up one day (ten years ago) fortunate to meet a gracious maintenance employee willing to give me a tour. He spoke of the place with such reverence making it difficult deciphering whom was having more fun, him or me. Two days later they closed their doors for good.
I have much better recollection of the Culver El extension which ran through Borough Park via 37th street - since truncated at Avenue C where today's F-train goes elevated/subterranean. Vivid childhood memories remain of my dad and me driving to his favorite food shops and passing by the Bocce ball guys playing in the grade level tracks underneath the still standing El at 14th Avenue.
Like the Manhattan surface transfers, all the railroad tickets pictured here were provided to me
by Mr. John Landers, whom several years ago in support of my blog reached out to me via email.
In fact, he was delightfully succinct when sending this particular picture, saying only, "The single rarest LIRR ticket known to exist, and it is mine! Only a REAL Brooklynite knows where Kouwenhoven is."
That says it all ...
I'll leave the details to the experts:
The New York and Manhattan Beach Railroad is also known as the Bay Ridge Branch. A well kept secret? Kinda, but in truth, not really. Growing up throughout Brooklyn we knew at some point trains must have run through here and there. But it wasn't the system we 80's teens were operating on and so we didn't think much of it despite there being evidence all around. Not knowing any better, we always thought they were abandoned. As adventurous dumb asses we would sometimes scale down and walk the tracks below the apartment towers along Flatbush near the Nostrand Avenue Junction. On my way to baseball practice at a batting cage located along Utica Ave and Foster Avenue I routinely passed underneath another portion of the line. The old batting cage was right up the block from the former church that for a while owned the Ebbets Field flagpole. We used to see that thing all the time. Then one day the flag pole mysteriously disappeared. The church had folded and sold it. A neighboring businessman on the block said they hauled it off on a flatbed. Thankfully it turned out being the Brooklyn Nets whom purchased it from the church and ceremoniously returned it to Flatbush Avenue.
The Bay Ridge Branch is most clearly visible at the 65th street Brooklyn Army Terminal water front, with views extending along the Sea Beach Line, 5th and 8th avenues, and particularly at the 62nd street and New Utrecht Avenue station. It runs under Brooklyn College, traverses Utica Avenue, Kings Highway, and Ralph Avenue in the Flatlands and Farragut sections of Brooklyn. Shortly thereafter one would finally pull into Kouvenhoven Station, said to be located just off Kings Highway on East 53 Street between Foster Avenue and Farragut Road. The station opened in the summer of 1877 but by 1924 ceased servicing public transportation.
COURTESY OF THE
JOHN LANDERS COLLECTION
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