Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 1 (1961).pdf/68

 The Hempstead Branch the road from Jerusalem School House (presently the junction of Wantagh Avenue and the Southern State Parkway) to the Hempstead depot. As winter closed in mid-November the contract for the west end was re-awarded to Walker, Fairchild & Clarke, and the east end to Shields & Rattin.

Nothing could be done over the winter months but with the end of March, the whole project sprang to life and fresh details were released to the press. The estimated cost of the road from Bay Ridge to Valley Stream was $600,000 including right of way and dockage. The Bay Ridge dock was to be 850 feet long, extending into the water 500 feet on one side and 800 feet on the other, with a minimum depth of water of fifteen feet. The Bergen farm of seven acres provided abundant land for freight and passenger facilities. A short distance inland was the most expensive grading on the whole road, one item being a tunnel 1780 feet long with an opening 24 × 16½ feet from the ridge to Sixth Avenue. Beyond that point and for the next five miles, the road was planned to pass under the major Brooklyn highways midway between Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Streets.

The deepest cut was forty-three feet at the Ridge itself; the average for a mile or so being about thirty feet with a width of thirty-two feet. Most of the sand and gravel being removed was used to fill in the hollows and bring up to grade Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Streets. From Fifth Avenue to the shore there were in June 1873 a force of about ninety men with forty horses and carts. The cut passed right through the old apple orchard of the Bergen farm, and the old mansion commanding a fine view of the bay degenerated into a bunkhouse for the shelter of the workmen. Between the shore and Third Avenue ties had already been laid on the graded area and all was in readiness for the iron. All New Utrecht seemed to be booming as a result of the influx of men and machinery and optimists fondly looked forward to broad vistas of new streets and suburbs in every direction. The entire project reminds us startlingly of the present-day Bay Ridge Division of the Long Island Railroad, built only a short time afterward and to a very similar pattern, and utilizing this same roadbed.

At Bay Ridge a dock crib and dredging machine were anchored and set to work to dig out the required depth, while at Hempstead the contractor was building an embankment across