Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/16

 8 contracts were advertised for the construction of a depot building, engine house, and car shop, returnable within ten days. Sylvester Roe, a Flushing builder, won the contract and commenced collecting materials on the site during November.

The gift of the Redwood property did not solve the depot problem completely; it merely provided land for a station and buildings. Mr. Prince instituted legal action to compel the company to change the angle of approach through his nursery grounds. He insisted that if the company were to place a curve on the meadows on the Corona side and then run the road in a straight line along a projected extension of Forty-first Avenue up to Main Street, damage to his nursery grounds would be at a minimum. He charged that the sole reason for the company's line of route was to secure the earth on several knolls on the Redwood property, and that this was a trivial reason for the location of a permanent installation like a railroad. The Prince claim received scant sympathy in the newspapers because of the delay it caused, and there were those who hinted darkly that Mr. Prince merely sought higher damages by this devious method.

Mr. Cross, the company surveyor, publicly testified that Mr. Prince's route had been checked, but that it would require 4300 feet of piling as against 3800; also that a curve would have to be located on the pile work, which was undesirable from an engineering point of view, and, finally, that the creek would have to be crossed diagonally, requiring a 500-foot bridge as against a 250-foot bridge. In view of the safety and cost factors the present route was preferred. To settle the dispute, the court appointed commissioners to check on the value of the 1.94 acres in dispute. Prince fulminated once more against the company, charging the engineer with imbecility and the directors with vanity, but his ruffled feathers were soothed on December 26th with a handsome settlement of $3200, of which $1200 was for trees. The large size of the award, double that of any other, was no doubt in deference to the Prince family, one of the oldest and most prominent in Flushing.

In the last days of 1853 the depot building in Flushing was rapidly being built, the drawbridge over Flushing Creek installed, the turntable dug out and laid with track, and the frame engine house and car shed completed. Some embarrassment was