Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Manhattan's Lost Streetcars
    Manhattan's Lost Streetcars
    Manhattan's Lost Streetcars
    Ebook158 pages59 minutes

    Manhattan's Lost Streetcars

    By Stephen L. Meyers

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    By the first quarter of the 20th century, Manhattan had well over 400 miles of streetcar trackage, an investment of several million dollars. Less than 50 years later, the rail system had completely vanished. Manhattan’s Lost Streetcars chronicles the finance, political pressures, and advancing technology behind Gotham’s streetcar networks from 1890 to 1935. The story ends with the dismantling of the system. Manhattan’s Lost Streetcars recalls a bygone era when public rail transportation was aboveground and New Yorkers rode the Metropolitan Street Railway, the Green Lines, the Manhattan Bridge Three Cent Line, and the Brooklyn & North River line, among others. It features images of the independent rail companies and the individual lines that made up a vast public transportation network in Manhattan.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 5, 2005
    ISBN9781439632604
    Manhattan's Lost Streetcars
    Author

    Stephen L. Meyers

    In Lost Troll eys of Qu een s an d Long Isl an d, Stephen L. Meyers gives t hese lines--more than 20 of them--new life. With exceptional images and fascinating detail about things like the tiny storage battery cars and the trolleys that met all the trains, he traces the streetcar era from the late 1800s to the mid-1930s. The author of Manhattan's Lost Streetcars, he is a longtime member of the Electric Railroaders' Association in New York and other rail groups.

    Related to Manhattan's Lost Streetcars

    Related ebooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Mildenhall Treasure

      Nov 5, 2021

      The Mildenhall Treasure
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Watch Doctor

      Jan 6, 2023

      The Watch Doctor
      4 min read

    • Article

      Malta

      Mar 26, 2020

      Malta
      2 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of Genius

      Jun 10, 2021

      Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence by Frances Wilson Bloomsbury, 512 pages, £25 DH Lawrence has proven to be an endlessly fascinating subject for biographers. There is his working-class upbringing as the son of a collier; the scholarships he won

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Enemy In The Machine

      Jan 10, 2017

      The Enemy In The Machine
      20 min read

    • Article

      Ocean View

      Jul 7, 2022

      Ocean View
      3 min read

    • Article

      From Louvre To Guggenheim: Why Abu Dhabi Has Big Plans For Art

      Mar 28, 2019

      Louvre Abu Dhabi: In the United Arab Emirates, promoting art is more than philanthropy, it’s a national priority.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of LARKING

      Sep 23, 2021

      The Art Of LARKING
      3 min read

    • Article

      In Atlanta, A Civil War Painting Stops Stretching The Truth

      Apr 11, 2019

      The Cyclorama’s costly restoration has become a teaching moment for Atlanta, whose 1864 defeat by Union troops it portrays.

      4 min read

    • Article

      England Coast Path

      Jun 30, 2022

      England Coast Path
      3 min read

    • Article

      Blood Lines

      Jan 6, 2022

      Blood Lines
      4 min read

    • Article

      Canal Fever

      May 16, 2023

      Canal Fever
      1 min read

    • Article

      On Manoeuvres

      Oct 7, 2021

      On Manoeuvres
      5 min read

    • Article

      Down the Tube

      Sep 6, 2019

      Down the Tube
      6 min read

    • Article

      Crazy Train

      Sep 12, 2020

      Crazy Train
      4 min read

    • Article

      Williams Revisited

      Mar 17, 2022

      Williams Revisited
      10 min read

    • Article

      Off the Rails

      Jul 23, 2019

      Off the Rails
      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Manhattan's Lost Streetcars

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Manhattan's Lost Streetcars - Stephen L. Meyers

      gay."

      INTRODUCTION

      Lost streetcars? Some streetcars were over 40 feet long, over 8 feet high, and more than 9 feet wide. So how could such an entity be considered lost?

      Like all too many American items, things can fall through the cracks, even while in plain sight. Manhattan’s street railways are a major case in point. At one time, well over two dozen street railways plied the streets and avenues of Manhattan while hundreds lived only as paper companies, yet today barely a handful are even recollected. The long-running Third Avenue Railway and the doughty Queensborough Bridge trolley might come to mind because they hung around until the mid-1950s. But each of those previously mentioned multitudinous entities had its own history and personality. Yet the stories of such companies as the schizophrenic New York and Harlem, the symbiotic Eighth and Ninth Avenues Railway, and even the high-profile New York Railways are lost in the mists of America’s industrial history. They, and many other of Gotham’s street railways, were instrumental in making New York City’s center, Manhattan, the heart of America’s most successful urban complex. This volume will attempt to identify and follow the rise and fall of a business that once had well over 470 miles of tracks, carrying millions of passengers daily and then virtually disappearing without a trace.

      The logical question would be, why did they get lost? The answer is quite complicated but generally falls into three major categories.

      First, they had value and were consolidated into larger systems, such as the Metropolitan Street Railway, which for about a decade, either owned or leased every streetcar company in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx and even ran some lines in suburban Westchester County. During that period, the individual companies lost their corporate identity and operated under the name of the consolidated operating company.

      Second, the companies built lines in areas where there was insufficient traffic to keep them solvent, so they went broke, were abandoned, and completely disappeared. An excellent example was the 28th and 29th Streets Crosstown Railway, which never should have been built and, early on, sunk without a trace.

      Third, the companies, usually the consolidated systems, died a natural economic death because they had outlived their usefulness. Sometimes because of a poor product: New York Railways, which in its death throes in the 1935–1936 period, were operating a fleet of streetcars designed in 1898, the newest of which was built in 1912, and the product was perceived as being old fashioned. And some never understood the strength of their competition, the subways and elevated rapid-transit lines. And finally, some expired because of political considerations, either real or manufactured. The plant of the Third Avenue Railway was reasonably modern, but the stated objective of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was to rid the city of streetcars. And, by using their franchises as leverage, he did.

      This book will attempt to explain the rise and fall of the street railway industry in prose and picture. Some of the photographs are old and quite rare, but all reflect the specific ways in which the streetcars of Manhattan impacted on the city’s development. You might be surprised.

      THE BEGINNINGS

      The term MABSTOA probably means little to the average New Yorker, but it is an acronym for New York City’s major bus-operating entity, the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority. They run the buses seen on the streets of Manhattan and the Bronx. And while you might recognize the route numbers on the buses, such as M-104 and M-15, you might be surprised to hear that the M-104 line was preceded by the 42nd Street, Manhattanville and St. Nicholas Avenue Railway (founded in 1878), and the M-15 is the successor to the Second Avenue Railroad (franchised in 1852). These are just two of the dozens of street railways that once covered Manhattan.

      This volume will attempt to explain the origins and to track the economic lives of those surface railways that helped to form the traffic patterns of Manhattan’s streets and explore those twists and turns of fate that changed the complexion of street traffic. But first we will draw some guidelines for this book. Although officially New York City consists of five boroughs, it is usually presumed that when the term New York City is used, it refers only to Manhattan. As a matter of fact, for years streetcars and buses coming over bridges from other boroughs into Manhattan carried New York on their destination signs.

      Manhattan is an island approximately 12½ miles long and about a mile and a half in width at its widest point. It was settled by the Dutch in the 1600s and lost to the British less than a quarter of a century later. The city was originally settled at its southernmost point, South Ferry and Bowling Green, and extended to the north, spreading out to its East River and North (Hudson) River boundaries as it grew. Around 1830, it became the major entre port for immigrants to the New World. The arrival of the immigrants quickly changed everything.

      New York was suddenly overwhelmed by the waves of these new settlers. The southern triangle of Manhattan was inundated by the new populace and strained at the seams. Housing became overcrowded, and the twin curses of crime and disease followed. For the next 75 years, this situation festered, but a strange partial remedy came out of this chaos. It was one of those unexpected inventions that changed forever the format of American cities. The discovery was the railroad—not only the steam-powered railroads that opened up the country but the horse-drawn variety as well. It proved the concept that a city could spread outward and still be a single political, social, and economic entity.

      On April

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1