The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part One: South Side R.R. of L.I./Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
The Era of Expansion: Patchogue, Rockaway And Hunter's Point
WITH the all-important deep-water terminus in Brooklyn secured, the South Side RR next bent all its efforts to completing the east end of the line. Originally, the company had planned to build only as far as Islip, but it quickly became evident that the much larger village of Patchogue would make a better terminus. Long before the first train opened regular service to Babylon on October 28, 1867, the inhabitants of the south shore villages were actively discussing just how far eastward the railroad should be extended. While the directors of the road were perfectly receptive to the idea of building farther afield, Patchogue seemed an immediate and practical goal.
The contract for grading the roadbed east of Babylon seems to have been given out as early as January 1868. By the last week of March the engineers' surveys were completed, and grading was planned as soon as the ground thawed sufficiently. On April 2, 1868 track-laying between Babylon and Patchogue was commenced, and on April 30 was completed as far east as Islip. It was tentatively planned to open service to Islip on May 1; workmen meanwhile hastily pushed on toward Patchogue. By August the grading had been completed to Sayville and grading between here and Patchogue was begun. In the first week of September workmen began laying the rails eastward from Islip and on Saturday, September 5, trains were run into the village of Islip for the first time.
Grading meanwhile had been pushed to within a mile of Patchogue. By September 10 the grading gang had passed Sayville. As a temporary measure arrangements were made with the proprietor of the stagecoach running along the Montauk Highway to carry passengers from Patchogue to the end of track. On September 7, Labor Day, no less than eighty passengers were so conveyed, something of a record for so small a vehicle on one day and almost a century ago. By September 21 the grading had approached to within a mile and a half of Patchogue. As autumn passed on into late October, the railroad came close to Sayville and the grading work into Patchogue reached completion; Superintendent White announced to the newspapers that service would begin to Sayville "in a fortnight."
In the first week of December Jack Frost put an end to all grading operations for the winter, but on or about December 11 Superintendent White did inaugurate the service to Sayville station as planned. So pleased were the residents of the town at having the trains before winter closed in that on Sunday the thirteenth, a large group of townsmen joined fifty of the railroad's employees in erecting and completing an engine house all in one day. Work necessarily came to a halt during the coldest winter months, but in March the railroad resumed work on the road, and pushed it as fast as the ground would allow. Finally, on or about April 10, 1869 the line was completed to Patchogue. One would suppose that the completion of the main line would have occasioned some sort of celebration, but the event must have been a quiet and casual affair, for it passed unchronicled in any of the newspapers of the island.
The mere presence of the South Side RR was a stimulus to all the villages along the south shore from the very day that the road had been organized. In an age when railroad facilities were a prestige symbol for a town and meant the difference between isolation and partnership with progress, forward looking townsmen and merchants in every village took it upon themselves to initiate promotion campaigns and to offer tempting inducements to railroad boards of directors to extend to their locality.
As early as January 1867, long before the first tie had been laid, the citizens of Moriches held a meeting and voted to grant the right-of-way through their land to the company. Not to be outdone in generosity, the landowners near Sag Harbor offered the same inducement in March. To smooth the advance of the railroad legally, committees arranged for the presentation to the Legislature of bills authorizing extension of the road through the Towns of Brookhaven and Southampton, and offered to market railroad bonds to the amount of eight and ten thousand dollars per mile of road built.
During the winter months of 1867–8 rallies were held in the principal villages to whip up railroad enthusiasm and in April the three townships of Brookhaven, Southampton and Easthampton came through handsomely with generous offers of money and land. Brookhaven offered $68,000 and the right of way, Southampton $112,000 and the right of way, and Easthampton $25,000, a grand total of $205,000 toward the completion of about forty-five miles of road eastward from Patchogue to Sag Harbor. This generous offer was presented to the directors of the South Side RR at their meeting on April 6, 1868 and unanimously accepted.
With the coming of spring in 1869, it was reliably reported that the directors were about to build along the proffered right of way from Patchogue through Bellport, Brookhaven, and Moriches to Riverhead, the county seat. The inhabitants of Riverhead declared themselves ready to vote $25,000 or more to encourage the enterprise.
Whatever the reason, nothing so grandiose as a Riverhead extension took place over the summer, but in the fall of 1869 commissioners were appointed to appraise the damages to property for a four-mile extension from Patchogue to the neighboring village of Bellport, in the hope that construction could begin in the spring of 1870. The people of Moriches, at a public meeting, also took the occasion to appoint a committee to wait upon President Fox of the South Side RR to persuade him to build as far as Eastport, the easterly limit of the Town of Brookhaven. President Fox replied that the request would be favorably considered, provided the residents along the proposed extension would subscribe for $140,000 of the first mortgage bonds of the railroad. At a meeting of the directors on the twenty-second it was voted to make a survey of the road.
In January it was reported that the $140,000 of stock had all been taken by the residents of the various villages, and that the engineering survey was being pushed. Then, oddly enough, all talk of eastward extensions ceased, and we hear of no further attempts either on the part of the villages or the railroad to move eastward. It is difficult to see after the lapse of a century just why this was so. We can only surmise that the tempting offers of stock and land were not as readily forthcoming as the railroad was led to expect, or, more likely, that the Long Island Rail Road's hasty extension to Sag Harbor just a few months later on June 8, 1870 siphoned off what little traffic originated on the east end.
The directors of the South Side RR were too astute and forward looking however, to waste the season of 1869 in idleness. From the very earliest days of the incorporation of the road, they had cast an appraising eye on the traffic possibilities of the Rockaways, as yet untapped by the Long Island RR. Before the Civil War, surf bathing and beach visiting were virtually unknown; it is difficult to imagine in our day when sun bathing and swimming have become a national cult and part of the mores of American society, that great beaches like Coney Island and Rockaway, only a few miles from the metropolis, were deserted and barren sand dunes.
In 1816 the Pavilion, the first seaside resort hotel in Rockaway opened its doors. During the 1830's visiting the Pavilion became fashionable, but not for the bathing facilities available. Persons of wealth boarded at the shore, ate quantities of "Rockaways," the most esteemed clams of that day, and attended cotillions and concerts in the evening. Life had a leisurely and aristocratic flavor, and none but the wealthy could afford the long, costly trip to the beach.
When the Pavilion burned down in 1863, it marked the end of an era. Hitherto, to get to Far Rockaway, one took the train to Jamaica, and then hired a stage coach to traverse the swampy stretches of the Jamaica & Rockaway Turnpike Co. (Rockaway Boulevard) to the shore. In October 1865 this primitive mode of travel was rendered obsolete by the opening of the Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach RR from East New York due south to Canarsie, where the traveler boarded one of the railroad's launches to any one of three landings, presently corresponding to Beach 111th Street, Beach 103rd Street and Beach 92nd Street.
The effect of the Canarsie route was to attract traffic to the present Hammel's, Seasideand Rockaway Beach and away from Far Rockaway. A further injury occurred in 1866 when the spring tides caused a long sand bar to form opposite the old Far Rockaway Beach about half a mile out in the water. The bar gradually grew and cut off the breakers, ruining surf bathing. In April 1870 the same spring tides in the course of one evening; swept over the island and washed it away to the great joy of the inhabitants, who prayed for a return of the old days when Far Rockaway was known as one of the best surf bathing beaches in the country.
The vast increase in population in Brooklyn and Williamsburgh during the 1860's because of the record immigration of Irish and Germans is another factor that must be considered in explaining the sudden popularity of the beaches in the late Sixties and early Seventies. These city dwellers lived closely together, raised large families, and worked six days a week; it was inevitable that cheap recreation would attract an overwhelming patronage.
With this potential bonanza in mind, the directors of the South Side RR resolved in 1868 to be the first to build a direct, overland route to the Rockaways. Because the charter of the South Side RR did not expressly permit the construction of a branch to the Rockaways, the directors had to incorporate a subsidiary called the "Far Rockaway Branch Rail Road Co. of Queens County." with Vandewater Smith, one of the directors, as its president.
On March 24, 1869 three hundred men were put to work at a point then known as Wood's Corner, near the Brush Farm, later Franklin Aye., Valley Stream. At almost the same time Electus B. Litchfield, the wealthy railroad magnate of Brooklyn and Babylon, purchased the whole J. N. Brush farm of eighty-five acres in all, for about $20,000 and laid out what became the village of Valley Stream. In the early days of April the work on the new branch accelerated; at the time 160 laborers had graded two miles of road, and on April 10 began laying the ties and rails. By the first of May the whole road had been graded.
Some of the right of way must have been secured by the issuance of lifetime passes to the property holders. We learn this indirectly from an amusing incident that occurred in the fall of this year 1869. An old man, a Mr. Norton, venerable with white hairs, took his seat in the coach with his aged wife. Something evidently excited the old man, for in an undertone he was laying down the law to his companion accompanied with violent gestures. When the conductor arrived, his excitement seemed to culminate. On inquiry it developed that for certain considerations President Vandewater Smith had bargained to allow Mr. Norton and his wife a free pass over the Rockaway and South Side Railroads during their natural lives. The trouble of the old man was that his pass was only dated for one year and had to be renewed each year, whereas he wished it to be perpetual without the burden of renewing it annually.
Just when the progress of the road was all that could be desired, a hitch developed in relation to some real estate. A Mr. William B. McManus who owned a farm located between Rockaway Turnpike and Washington Avenue, Lawrence, and which would be cut in two by the railroad right of way, refused to accept the railroad's valuation on his property, and successfully petitioned for an injunction on May 30, 1869.
This was a severe blow to the railroad's hopes for they were bending every effort to open the line in time for the summer patronage; in desperation they formulated an emergency plan to run trains as far as the McManus property, and convey passengers the rest of the way by stagecoach. By a legal quirk this proved unnecessary; McManus' injunction against the South Side RR expired at 11 A.M. on June 24, and before McManus had time to have it renewed, a force of about seventy men laid the ties and rails over the 700-foot distance within three hours and a construction train ran over it. The railroad hoped to surface up and level the track and roadbed over the weekend of June 26–27 and then begin service.
McManus had probably not realized that the railroad was capable of such sharp dealing, but neither did the railroad realize the sort of man they were dealing with. The following night McManus rounded up a group of fellow Irishmen and not only tore up the 700 feet of track, but did it so thoroughly that every rail was ruined in the process of removal.
The railroad was jolted by this unusual show of spirit and began proceedings to discover the culprits. The following weekend McManus was arrested on a complaint of Vandewater Smith, president of the Far Rockaway Branch RR, on charges of malicious and willful destruction. McManus was discharged on a legal objection that the complaint did not state facts sufficient to bring the defendant within the provisions of the statute. President Smith objected to dismissing the suit and a new hearing was scheduled.
Meanwhile McManus' counsel threatened that he would sell or otherwise dispose of the track and crossties if not removed from the premises, and this so alarmed the railroad that they secured an injunction from the Supreme Court forbidding any tampering with their property until final adjudication.
At the next court hearing three commissioners were appointed to assess the McManus property and to make an award. On July 23, 1869 the commissioners inspected the land and after conferring, confirmed an award of $425 to McManus. Predictably, that gentleman flew into a rage and planned to appeal from the decision. Meanwhile, the railroad relaid its ravaged roadbed on July 28.
On Thursday, July 29, 1869 the branch road to Far Rockaway was opened to the public. The importance of the new route could hardly be overestimated. For the first time Rockaway was brought into direct communication with Brooklyn, and it became possible for the average man to visit the beach for the day after traveling for only forty minutes. The total investment for the company came to about $75,000, but it was hoped that the returns would be many times that sum.
The South Side RR terminal depot and roundhouse in Far Rockaway occupied the present site of the Long Island RR's depot facing Mott Avenue. Because the South Side terminal was at the north end of the village of Far Rockaway, passengers still had the long distance of a mile to walk to the bathing beach and had to compete for space with the boarders of the many hotels in the village. West of the present Beach Twentieth Street there were no houses or hotels, and the beach and sand dunes stretched for miles; it occurred to the railroad directors that simply by constructing a sweeping curve along the north and west of the village, they could have a terminus right at the water's edge with a beach of their own.
With this object in mind the road initiated fresh construction in July 1869. By the end of August the required one mile of track was completed to the dune headlands between Edgemere and Wave Crest and terminating at a point which today is approximately Beach Thirtieth Street and the Boardwalk. On September 1 the new spur was completed and excursion tickets were put on sale for September 2, entitling the purchaser to a round trip ride, a free lunch and participation in a clambake, in honor of the inauguration of the new line.
On Thursday, September 2, 1869 the new road was opened as planned. President Charles Fox of the South Side RR and Vandewater Smith of the Far Rockaway Branch road, along with many directors and their families, came down to the beach and filled the large tents surrounding the clam pits. Lunch was served to about 200 guests of the railroad present and short speeches were made by the two presidents to mark the occasion, followed by an inspection of the neighborhood. During the following spring of the 1870 season the railroad erected a large restaurant or pavilion 125 × 200 feet on the beach facing the ocean for the convenience of its patrons. Connected with it was a kitchen and rooms for the keeper and his family. On timetables this structure was first referred to simply as "Beach," later "Beach House," and after 1872 as "South Side Pavilion."
By the summer of 1870 the South Side Pavilion was in full operation. There was a large "saloon" where individuals or parties could buy a substantial meal at popular prices, or if they preferred, could occupy guest tables at a rental of twenty-five cents. A string band was provided by the railroad every afternoon for persons wishing to dance. On the beach side there were bath houses, where the railroad rented out bathing suits and extended facilities for checking valuables. A plank walk led from the open depot tracks to the water's edge. So proud was the railroad of its Beach House that it ran another private Rockaway excursion for its board of directors on August 3, 1870.
In 1871 the railroad entrusted the management of the South Side Pavilion to professional operators, Messrs. Hicks & Dibble. On June 5 the place was officially opened for the season and the railroad again ran a private excursion consisting of three coaches and the locomotive "J. B. Johnston" for the benefit of railroad executives, politicians and guests, all of whom partook liberally of the clam roasts and clam chowders for which the house was noted, and later regaled themselves with the yachting and blue-fishing facilities.
As the 1871 season wore on, the directors resolved on a new and still more impressive improvement; this was-to extend the tracks westward from the South Side Pavilion all the way along the Rockaway peninsula as far as the limit of habitation.
One motive behind this extension was to capture all the Rockaway passenger traffic which up to then had been shared with the Brooklyn & Rockaway Beach RR Co., operating from East New York to Canarsie. While Far Rockaway was an old seaside resort of half a century's standing, the peninsula itself had been slowly developing and was in 1870 the exclusive preserve of four or five hotels. In 1856 James S. Remsen of Jamaica bought a considerable tract of land at Rockaway Beach for $500. In this primitive wilderness he built a little barroom and chowder house, which over the years gradually developed into the Seaside House.
At first the house catered only to fisherfolk and boat parties, but after the Brooklyn & Rockaway Beach RR opened in October 1865, a bay landing was constructed at Remsen Avenue (Beach 103rd Street) and the railroad's ferry boats disgorged Rockaway's first beach crowds visiting just for the day, and intent on swimming, picnicking and gargantuan clam and oyster-eating orgies. Remsen sold some of his land for enormous sums and rented out the rest, including the Seaside House, which, by 1869, was the largest establishment along the dunes. It was this seaside resort that exerted a magnetic appeal on the directors of the South Side RR, and it was towards this goal that fresh construction began in April and May 1872.
There was a second and more immediate motive for building the beach extension in 1872, the unpleasant fact that Oliver Charlickof the Long Island RR was building his own Rockaway Branch from Rockaway Junction (present Hillside station) southward to an undefined point. Unless the South Side RR built immediately westward from their pavilion, their rival Charlick would beat them to the punch. Work was rushed on the new line, which was laid along the highest point of the beach ridge, affording a fine view of the ocean.
On July 4, 1872 the new line opened through to the Seaside House (Beach 103rd Street, Seaside Station). There were two intermediate stations: Eldert's Grove (Beach Eighty-fourth Street, now Hammel's) and Holland's (Beach Ninety-second Street, now Holland Station). Both of these were resort hotels, the one run by Garry Eldert and the other by Michael Holland. Two years later in May 1875 directors extended the branch one step further to the Neptune House (Beach 116th Street) which became the permanent terminus.
With the extension to the Rockaways an assured success that would grow with the years, the South Side RR resolved to go through with another project which had been under discussion for some time, namely, a branch to Hunter's Point. During the long negotiations with the City of Brooklyn during 1867 and 1868 for an outlet to the East River, the alternative of reaching the waterfront by a route along Newtown Creek to Hunter's Point had frequently come up, and had been used as a potent argument in case the city authorities should prove balky.
Even with the Brooklyn route secured, the railroad was not completely satisfied. The biggest handicap was the difficulty in shuttling freight cars back and forth from the ferry to Bushwick station along a single track through streets crowded with wagons and horse cars, and with the ever-present menace of children and venturesome boys. By building a branch along the north side of Newtown Creek, the road could obtain a deep water terminal without the handicaps of the Williamsburgh route, but such a road would be expensive because of the right-of-way through commercial properties, and because it would meet the certain opposition of the Long Island RR and its politically formidable president, Oliver Charlick.
Now it so happened that there was already such a railroad along the creek from Maspeth to Hunter's Point built by the New York & Flushing RR in 1854. If the South Side RR were to obtain control of this road and build a short connecting spur, a road of its own would be unnecessary. In May 1867 the newspapers reported that the South Side and Flushing railroads were negotiating an agreement by which the former was to use the latter's tracks from Blissville to Hunter's Point, where the South Side would use the Long Dock just south of the LIRR depot. A depot would be erected at Vernon Blvd. and Newtown Creek for the South Side trains.
No sooner did Oliver Charlick, president of the LIRR, get wind of this deal than he himself began making attractive offers to the New York & Flushing RR for their property. With his many political and business connections, plus his own and his railroad's considerable financial backing, Charlick was easily in a position to outbid the South Side people, and in July 1867, to no one's surprise, he obtained control of the road. With access to Hunter's Point effectively cut off, the South Side RR had to be content with a Brooklyn terminus. Oliver Charlick, meanwhile, had no personal interest in the New York & Flushing now that the South Side RR had given up hope of acquiring it, and within a year's time (August 1868) he sold it again to a group of Flushing business men.
This act proved to be one of Oliver Charlick's very few mistakes in judgment, for no sooner had the road been sold than the South Side again sought to exercise the option it claimed to have secured in May 1867, and reportedly began preparations to construct a connection. All sorts of legal difficulties created by the Long Island RR delayed matters, but in October 1869, it was reported that the South Side had completed the purchase of a portion of the New York & Flushing line. By the new agreement the South Side became undisputed owner of the old New York & Flushing right-of-way from Winfield Junction to the Hunter's Point dock at a reported price of $40,000 per mile. The New York & Flushing had, during this very month of October 1869, accommodatingly constructed a new route for itself into Long Island City and willingly disposed of the old route.
During November the surveying team of the South Side RR toured the right-of-way and reported that it would be necessary to build a spur of one and one-tenth miles from Fresh Ponds to Blissville to complete the connection between the two roads. The exact point of the connection was the present Forty-ninth Street and Fifty-sixth Road, immediately west of the present Haberman station. Again the South Side found it legally necessary to set up a subsidiary to build the spur and the "South Side Connection Railroad Co." was duly incorporated with one of the directors as president. On December 4, 1869 the contract to build the connection was formally awarded to Robert White, ex-superintendent of the road and now a director, and James Wright.
Work on the connection began on Tuesday morning, December 7. Because the old New York & Flushing rails were of very light iron, it was decided to rebuild the old roadbed to the same standards as the rest of the South Side, i.e. thorough ballasting and sixty-pound rails. New culverts and bridges were also to be constructed to withstand heavier loads. Despite the winter weather contractors pushed the construction of the connection energetically in December and January; early in February the road was reported as "about completed", and to open by May 1. During the first week of April the grading of the roadbed reached completion and the laying of the rails had begun.
Just as everything was going along smoothly, the South Side RR experienced a repetition of its Rockaway experience. Mr. William E. Furman, ex-sheriff and a member of one of the pioneer families of Queens, lived in a mansion on the north side of Maspeth Aye. at 57th St. South of the house on the now obliterated Shanty Creek Mr. Furman had constructed one of the show places of Long Island, a complete trout-breeding farm. Fresh water from springs passing west into Newtown Creek was diverted through a series of S-shaped sluices, bedded with gravel and sand for spawning. When the surveyors laid out the track through the Furman property, they located it within about five feet of Mr. Furman's house. He offered the railroad additional land and $2000 to change their route, but they reportedly refused, whereupon he procured an injunction. A week later on April 28 the injunction was lifted. It was then given out that the trouble was not one of route, as the sheriff had consented that the line be run within eighty feet of the house, but as to the amount of land damage, Mr. Furman asking $8000 and the commissioners awarding only $2250.
With peace restored the work of grading was continued and some of the track work done. As the railroad approached closer and closer to Hunter's Point, it decided to make renewed efforts to get possession of the Hunter's Point dock. It happened that the Long Island RR owned the approaches to the dock, and because President Charlick refused the right to cross his land, the property was nearly worthless. The South Side RR then successfully petitioned the Legislature to open a street across the Long Island RR property, whereupon Charlick countered by producing a lease on the old Long Dock property to himself, which he claimed to have executed in his own favor during his brief tenure as president of the New York & Flushing (1867–68).
The South Side, checkmated, decided that if this lease could be vacated, they would build a depot on the Long Dock property; if not, they would cross over the Long Island RR tracks and use the Flushing RR depot. In July or August the railroad filed an ejectment suit against the Long Island RR to gain possession.
Meanwhile on May 31, 1870 the physical connection between the two roads was completed, and a South Side engine and construction train steamed into Hunter's Point for the first time. The segment of the old Flushing railroad between Forty-ninth Street, Blissville and Winfield was of no immediate value to the railroad, and originated no traffic since it passed entirely through farmland. The South Side management, rather than tear up the track entirely, placed a dummy, acquired cheaply from the Atlantic Avenue RR, on the route on August 6, 1870. Twenty trips were made each way, commencing at 5:30 A.M. from Winfield, and the last car reaching Hunter's Point at 10:27 P.M. Three stops were made on the route: Calvary Cemetery (Greenpoint Aye., the old cemetery gate), Penny Bridge (Laurel Hill Blvd.), and Maspeth (Borden Aye.?) We hear nothing further of this service, nor is this stretch of track ever mentioned again. It is not hard to surmise that the lonesome route, which passed through no hamlets at all, originated almost no revenue traffic. The South Side RR undoubtedly retained the right of way and the track, for the road is again mentioned in December 1875, when there was some idea of reviving it as a freight line.