Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 1 (1961).pdf/19

 12 in the Common Council and the railroad was refused entry into Brooklyn along the line of Metropolitan Avenue with steam cars. In September the South Side RR again petitioned the Common Council to enter Brooklyn, this time along the line of Dickinson Avenue, then north up Vandervoort Avenue to Orient, and west along Orient Avenue to the jnuctionjunction [sic] of Metropolitan and Bushwick Avenues. This route was poor, involving two sharp turns, yet opposition again developed despite the absence of houses along the route. As November 1867 wore on with no solution in sight, the Brooklyn Times editorially suggested that the South Side might achieve a river terminus cheaply and easily by going along the line of Bushwick Creek (North Thirteenth Street and through McCarren Park), the very route later to be chosen for the Manhattan Beach road, but intimated that the railroad should be satisfied with a depot on Bushwick Avenue.

The South Side RR made one last try before accepting the advice of the Times. On November 28, 1867 the road petitioned the Common Conucil to enter Brooklyn along the line of Montrose Avenue and to build a depot at Union Avenue. The advantages were that Montrose Avenue was eighty feet wide in Williamsburgh and that east of Bushwick Avenue, it existed only on paper, traversing a swamp and meadow with not a single house. From Bushwick to Union Avenue was densely populated, to be sure, but this stretch was only five blocks long.

No one at all objected to the meadowland route to the east, but for the five block stretch to Union Avenue there was strong opposition because of the dense population all about; all the old arguments against steam were trotted out and restated. Some one proposed a tunnel but the railroad engineers pointed out that the ground level was only seven to ten feet above high water and that the railroad was unable to expend the estimated cost of almost a million dollars.

As the year 1867 came to a close with the matter still deadlocked, the railroad accepted what had long been apparent: a terminus on the edge of the city (Bushwick Avenue) and the use of horses to pull the cars the rest of the distance to the ferry. As soon as the railroad made known its willingness to accept this compromise, the Common Council on December 16 gratefully ended the long dispute by granting a depot on Bushwick Avenue