How We Got to Coney Island: The Development of Mass Transportation in Brooklyn and Kings County

Preface

PREFACE AN IRREGULAR PROCESSION of offshore islands helps define the eastern seaboard of the United States. Formed in many cases of nothing more substantial than shifting sand, and subject to constant change by the natural forces of wind and tide, these islands evoke pleasant images of rolling surf breaking onto white sandy beaches, leisurely afternoons under the hot sun, pleasant shore dinners, good friends, amusements in near infinite variety, cold drinks, lively music, and romantic evenings. Among these wonderful islands are such familiar names as Key West, Miami Beach, Hilton Head, the Outer Banks, Atlantic City, Fire Island, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. This is a story about a particular offshore island of relaxation and recreation. It is not a terribly large island—a little less than five miles long, and no more than a half mile wide. And to begin our story on a totally appropriate note of ambiguity, confusion, and linguistic imprecision, the offshore island whose history we are about to explore is not really an island at all—at least not any more. One hundred and fifty years ago it was a true island. And a hundred years before that, the island that is no longer an island was actually two or three separate islands. This, then, is the story of Coney Island, a wonderful, mystical, sad, happy, sometimes dangerous, often different, and utterly contradictory place whose contribution to the development of a distinctly American culture is as profound as it is underappreciated. Coney Island—in the borough of Brooklyn, the county of Kings, the city and state of New York. Coney Island—40 degrees, 35 minutes north latitude; 74 degrees, 59 minutes west longitude; postal ZIP code 11224, with a little spillover into 11235. Coney Island—the one, not really the only one any more, but certainly the original. Coney Island—where the hot dog is often said to have been invented , but actually wasn’t. Coney Island—where any distinction xiv PREFACE between illusion and reality is probably in the eye of the beholder. But then again, maybe it isn’t. This tale of Coney Island is not a tale of its beaches and its restaurants, its amusement parks and its hotels, its racetracks and its beer gardens. Or at least it is not primarily such a story. Rather, on the assumption that before one can enjoy Coney Island one must first get there, this is a tale of how the allure and attraction of Coney Island led to the development of a marvelous network of transportation over the years to link the oceanfront sand spit with the rest of Brooklyn and, somewhat less important, with the rest of the world. It is a tale of steamboats and steam trains, of trolley cars and elevated lines, of internal combustion engines and coaches drawn by teams of horses, of subways and highways, of plans and dreams that were realized, and of plans and dreams that were never quite realized. The Cyclone, the Wonder Wheel, the Parachute Jump, and Steeplechase are famous Coney Island institutions . But so are the Brighton Line, the Culver Line, the West End, and the Sea Beach. Telling the story of how we got to Coney Island necessarily provides a look into how urban and local transportation has evolved in Brooklyn and Kings County from the middle years of the nineteenth century right up to the present. Indeed, this story focuses on Brooklyn to a substantially greater degree than it does on Coney Island. The transportation history of Brooklyn is rich and distinctive, and yet it is all too easily overshadowed by the history of transportation in the larger polity of the City of New York. Such New York institutions as the Third Avenue elevated train, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) subway, Penn Station, and the Hudson River Day Line are well known and have provided appropriate subject matter for a shelf full of important books. Far less known, but equally colorful and possibly just as important, are such Brooklyn-oriented transport undertakings as the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad, the Iron Steamboat Company, the Fulton Street elevated train, and the Brooklyn City Railroad. The fact that Brooklyn transportation history has been largely overshadowed by that of New York is understandable but unfortunate . It is understandable because, since the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1898, Brooklyn has been one of five boroughs within an expanded political jurisdiction called the City of New York and PREFACE xv its status as an...