Oh, Streetcar!

Avenue C (now Cortelyou Rd) between the Brighton Line and the Avenue C trolley. See more from Bob Diamond's collection.

Bob Diamond, a Kensington resident, has spent decades curating the abandoned Atlantic Avenue train tunnel. Since the '80s he's had permission from the city to give tours of the space, which was built in 1844 and sealed in 1861. Then this past December, the Transportation Department said the tunnel was off-limits because of fire safety concerns. Now he's suing the city for access and damages. To tide us over until the tours resume, Diamond has provided some of his knowledge of Kensington's train history for us to enjoy.

In addition to the tunnel, Diamond has a passion for streetcars. The Brooklyn Historic Railway Association (BHRA), a non-profit formed by Diamond in 1982, has a museum and trolley barn in Red Hook, and has been advocating for a functioning streetcar line there (currently being studied by the city). So how about a trolley in our area? "Church Avenue would make a great streetcar route, from Dahill Road to East 92nd Street," he says.

And why not? We've had trolleys in the past--well, the distant past anyway. Cortelyou Road once had a single track trolley line, back before the street was was renamed, and was known as Avenue C. The line evolved, eventually, into the now-defunct B23 bus line.


See Arrt's Arrchives for more great photos.

"The cement company on the corner of Cortelyou and McDonald used to be a junction for the McDonald (Gravesend Ave) streetcar, the Cortelyou Road streetcar, and the 16th Avenue streetcar," Diamond explains. The lot contained trolley siding tracks, and around the late 1850s those sidings housed a streetcar museum. "No joke! There was also an 'interlocking tower' [pictured above] on the premises that controlled the junction. The head of that trolley museum, Everett White, lived in the tower."

Before we start thinking about developing a trolley line that terminates at Dahill, we'd do well to fix the transit infrastructure we already have. Though work on some crumbling Culver Line F stations has begun, it's hardly sufficient. "They seem to have forgotten about rehabbing the bulk of this line from Church Ave to West 8th Street," Diamond says. "The West End line [D train] is getting a complete make over, why not the Culver--it's the same age, and just as corroded?"

Let's hope the MTA considers the south end of the line for rehabilitation soon. But if not, and through budget cuts and creative destruction they figure out a way to seal parts of it up, Bob Diamond will be there to remind us where things were.