Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/43



HE LITCHFIELD REGIME was destined to be a brief one—only ten months in all—but it was a time of improvement. One of Litchfield's first acts was a reduction in the commutation rates, a change that immediately endeared him to the traveling public. He also made renewed efforts to give the railroad a Brooklyn outlet and better ferry accommodations. In the fall of 1859 the Brooklyn Common Council had granted to the railroad the privilege of laying tracks along Maspeth Avenue, North Second Street and Grand Street, and on Meeker and Kingsland Avenues, but the mayor had vetoed there solution. In February 1860 the Council again brought the matter to a vote and overrode the mayor's veto. Litchfield must have changed his mind about the value of these two Williamsburgh routes for he made no effort to avail himself of them. Instead, we find him penning a letter on October 15, 1860 to the Common Council, asking for permission to lay double tracks down Union Avenue, Brooklyn, to Greenpoint Avenue, west along Greenpoint Avenue to Franklin Street and south down Franklin Street and Kent Avenue to the Broadway Ferry. Steam operation would end at Newtown Creek and the cars would be pulled through Brooklyn by horses. There is no record that the Common Council acceded to this request. This, so far as is known, represents the final effort of the Flushing R.R. to penetrate Brooklyn.

Viewed in retrospect, the project of constructing a long horse car line through Brooklyn would have been of very small value, and from a financial point of view, suicidal. The grant was limited to ten years only and the expense of construction enormous. It was one thing to lay track in the open country, but quite another to install rail in Belgian block paving; in addition, the project would have involved the purchase of many new horse cars and the maintenance of a large stable of horses.