redhook

Are trolleys truly extinct? According to the City of New York, they are. But for a brief shining moment in Brooklyn, they weren't.

There was a Jurassic Park-like experiment that went on in remote Red Hook, Brooklyn, where a Flatbush resident named Bob Diamond dreamt of returning trolley cars to their rightful place on the streets of Brooklyn, where they ran for the greater part of the 20th Century. In Jurassic Park, David Attenborough cloned some dino DNA found in an amber-preserved insect, and bingo, a flock of maneating lizards appeared. Diamond has acquired some trolley DNA in the form of cars from Norway once ridden in by royalty and PCC cars from Boston. He intended they rid the waterfront streets of auto traffic the way the dinos got rid of hapless villains and extras in the Crichton-penned masterpiece.

In 2003, the City pulled the plug on Diamond's dream. The DOT insisted that Bob acquire independent funding for the project; he was unable to do so.

By mid-2005, a new organization, the Brooklyn City Streetcar Company, was hoping to take over some of the cars and hopefully, begin restoring them anew.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

After discovering an abandoned LIRR tunnel under Atlantic Avenue in the early 1980s, Diamond set in motion a process that he hoped would someday bring trolley service from Red Hook to Brooklyn Heights.

An 1890s trolley car built by a German company which had run in the streets of Oslo, Norway for decades is undergoing renovations at the BHRA.

This car has already seen service on Brooklyn waterfront streets.

Photo: Mike Olshan

Car #3 would have been activated for runs along the Brooklyn waterfront. Above photos by Mike Olshan.

The Beard Street Pier is the focus of revitalization of this heretofore unknown corner of Brooklyn. Red Hook has been more or less isolated from the rest of Brooklyn by the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1950s.

The pier has been renovated in recent years.

Not since the 1950s have trolley poles actually been used for something other than places to hang ads and signs in NYC streets.

Trackways, and the catenary wire providing power to the trolley cars.

There is even a replica of a trolley station at the BHRA museum.

The tracks feature paving stones which have been salvaged from Baltimore's Pennsylvania Station. These are original stones dating back to the system's early days in 1906.

Signals had been salvaged and would have been used along the route.

Two of the PCC's were out taking some sun while being renovated on a weekday afternoon, in view of the Statue Of Liberty.

Even though these cars are originally from the Boston Green Line, they were being reconfigured to match as accurately as possible the way Brooklyn cars looked in the 1950s, from ironwork to paint color selection (two shades of green) to typefonts used on the car numbers.

The walkway adjacent to the track had been completed.

No, there never really was a route that went straight to Ebbets Field from downtown.

Even so, the lettering on the old roll signs has been scanned, digitized and the new signs match as closely as possible the lettering style of the old ones.

The interior was ready to roll. The plastic seats date from the PCC's 1970s tenure on the MBTA Green Line.

Trackwork had begun in 2002 along Conover and Reed Streets. It has since been ripped up.

BHRA construction along Conover Street...

...and Beard Street in early 2002

Red Hook has a rich trolley legacy. These tracks from the glory days, at Columbia and Woodhull Streets, have never been removed

I took the time to walk along the streets of Red Hook near the BHRA. Continuing our dinosaur theme, these streets can sometimes look like the Lost World, with the detritus of several decades all combining to provide a picture of surreality.

Across Conover Street from the BHRA, a 1914 Lehigh Valley Railroad barge has been converted to the Waterfront Museum, which offers art and history exhibitions, activities for kids, and music on summer evenings. The barge has since been relocated to the end of Columbia Street.

Sunny's Bar, Conover and Reed Streets

It's the taste that beats the others cold. This Pepsi thermometer dates to the early 1960s. Soft drinks, for some reason, are represented heavily by ancient ads in NYC streets, though I haven't found any old Moxie ads yet.

Special thanks to Jan K. Lorenzen, Mike Olshan and Robert Diamond for their assistance with this page.

The end of Conover Street is also where you go to pick up your car when it's been towed away. This Dodge wagon of 1960 vintage was here in this same spot when I was here in the summer of 1998, and it's still here in spring 2000.

Note the 1910-vintage sign for "Red Hook Stores" in the background. Not 'stores' in the current sense, but a place where various materials were 'stored' before being delivered to retail establishments. Brooklyn, formerly a port city, has had waterfront activity drastically curtailed from the mid-1900s.

By 2005 this building was being converted into a Fairway supermarket, which opened in 2006.

By 2006 the Boston cars had been moved behind Fairway, still open to the elements.

UPDATE from Forgotten Fan Chris DeLeon: After the folding of the Brooklyn Historic Railway, former members of the BHR formed The Brooklyn City Streetcar Company to pick up really from square 1 where the BHR was at.

The 2 restored Boston PCC's and an additonal PCC car remain. They have been sitting outside for sometime now as of may of 2007. There are tons of pictures of these cars on Flickr.

With the development of Red Hook, the cruise terminal, Fairway, the new water taxi dockings (its headquaters is also in red hook) and new housing, the trolley project has gained interest again. Brooklyn City Streetcar has its own website www.brooklynstreetcar.org (as yet undeveloped). They are looking to put streetcars in with the Brooklyn Bridge Park project as well as the redevelopment of Coney Island.

E mail me at erpietri@earthlink.net.