Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/102

 86 group began work in the Hempstead Town cemetery grounds east of Franklin Avenue and along the present right-of-way in Garden City.

It now became necessary to determine the exact right-of-way between Hyde Park and Flushing; in February 1871 the Poppenhusens made overtures to the North Shore R.R. directors to branch off from their road somewhere near Broadway station, but this fell through. After a short time the final plans were drawn up and filed in the County Clerk's office on March 4, 1871.The new line diverged from the Flushing & North Side at the eastern end of the Main Street drawbridge and crossed south of Flushing village, through Kissena Park, and then southeast across country to Floral Park and New Hyde Park.

On March 7, 1871, Mr. John Higgins of Flushing, who did much of the work for the Flushing & North Side road, began work at Lawrence Street, Flushing, on the tunnel that would carry the tracks beneath that street. The tunnel was to be 160 feet long and 17 feet high, to be built of Greenwich stone in irregular rectangular bond work with neat facades and parapet walls at each end. In April all the contracts for the Central R.R. were let. Messrs. Smith and Ripley won the contract for grading the first half of the first section from Central Junction to Lawrence Street, and for a small section at Black Stump Road (Seventh-third Avenue); Messrs. Dunne and Lowther continued the work from Lawrence Street to 197th Street with eighty men and thirty-five horses; Messrs. Smith and Ripley from 197th Street through Rocky Hill to Winchester Boulevard, and Brian and Kingsley from Winchester Boulevard (old Alley Road) to the border of the Stewart property. They operated twenty carts. Messrs. Smith and Ripley originally had the contract for the entire road but decided to concentrate on the third section because of the large amount of grading and blasting necessary to break through the backbone of the island at Rocky Hill north of Hillside Avenue. Dunne and Lowther began work on April 17 on the Kissena Meadows and by mid-May their gang of 100 men had penetrated to Kissena Lake.

In May 1871 work was commenced in earnest at Rocky Hill (presently where Springfield Boulevard crosses Grand Central Parkway). The land at this point rises from forty to fifty feet above sea level to a mean elevation of 140 to 160 feet, much of