At one 1945 Saturday lunch with my Aunt Leah at Leventhal’s restaurant, west side of Broadway around 107th Street, facing toward the east and thus enjoying the parade of Huffliners and the occasional convertible, the thought occurred, I should go to Coney Island all the way from home or Aunt Leah’s apartment by streetcar. The route was obvious, and the attempt seemed worthwhile. Broadway-42nd “B” car to 42nd & 3rd, free transfer to “T” Third & Amsterdam down 3rd, the Bowery, and Park Row to the south terminal at City Hall, a very short hop to the adjacent terminal of the Brooklyn Bridge streetcars; then either the Smith St. Coney Island Avenue or the McDonald – Vanderbilt Avenues car to the West 5th Street “Culver Terminal” at Coney Island. I did this twice, but before I started taking streetcar pictures; and at the very time I started, the Broadway – 42nd Street “B” was replaced by the M104 Bus.
Mark Steele, a Columbia Grammar Preparatory Highschool classmate and I rode streetcars to the Yonkers – Hastings Line, hiked to Tarrytown, with a stop for a picnic lunch, visited our Mathematics teacher ”Big Jim” James Reynolds, and returned to Manhattan via the New York Central. So the next step in my thinking was Coney Island to Hastings Line, and I made one attempt by the direct streetcar routing that existed until the end of March, 1947. This was Smith - Coney Island or McDonald -Vanderbilt, from Coney Island to Park Row City Hall Manhattan, then the “T” Third & Amsterdam to West 161st Street, free transfer to “K” (Kingsbridge) 125th Amsterdam Broadway, to West 225th Street, Marble Hill, another 5-cent fare on “C” Bronx & Van Cortland , up Broadway to the Yonkers Line, Then, another nickel fare on the “1” Broadway – Warburton Avenue to the Hastings Line.
Mark Steele, later a very successful physician in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh, has a turn at the controls of Bailey Avenue, The Bronx, streetcar; and “Big Jim” Reynolds assists a student (Wendel Brazzi?) at Columbia Grammar
Only a few yards separated the Brooklyn Bride streetcar loops from the Third Avenue Transit “T” City Hall stub-end terminal, but there was no track connection between the two systems there.
When I attenpted Coney Idsland – Hastings via the logial connection at Park Row – City Hall, convertibles were still in use on the “C” Bronx and Van Cortlandev Parks route. Here the operator is changing ends at West 262hd Street, Yonkers town line, while I wait for a following northbound “1” Broadway – Warburton Avenue car to takr mr to the Hastings towen line. But on Warburton Avenue, north of Main Street, Yonkers, I realized that by continuing to Hastings, I’d be back at home, West 85th Manhattan, far too late for normal dinner hour, and that my parents would be worried. So I left the Third Avenue Trabnsit lightweight at a stop close by The Central’s Glenwood Station, and had to account the attempt as a close miss, not a success.
Hopes for success seemed ended when the “T” Third & Amsterdam Avenue line went to the M101 bus in late March. But I continued to explore and photograph The Bronx trolley lines. An operstor on the lightly-used, sparse auto-traffic Bailey Avenue Line instructed me and allowed me to run the streetcar! These Bronx explorations usually also involved riding Manhattan’s “K,” which remained with the “X” 125th Crosstown as a streetcar line to the end of June; and the main shop and carhouse ast Third Avenue and 65th Street remained in use. Weekdays, “K” cars still entered service at houly intervals from 2:30pm on, and traveled north on the “T” on track still in service. 3rd and 65th is not far from 59th and 2nd, still then the location of the underground terminal of Queensboro Bridge Railway that continued running into 1957, New York City’s and State’s last streetcar line (until the revival occurs there!). And the Vernon Avenue on-the-bridge station, with elevator, seemed within reasonable walking distance of Brooklyn’s Graham Avenue and Crosstown Lines’ Long Island City, Queenss terminal loops. Another attempt seemed powssible.
In early June, after school closing and before my leaving for summer camp, my Columbia Grammar classmate and first-cousin David Lewis was an overnight guest at our West 85th Street home, as his parents, my Aunt Hannah and Uncle Nat, were out-of-town. Tommy Lenthal (formerly Lewenthal) was the older of two sons of a German Jewish photographer refugee who had an apartment at our home. Tommy and David agreed to go to Coney Island by subway early one morning, enjoy the attractions at Coney Island, and then leave by streetcar in the early afternoon with an attempt reach the Hastings line. Cousin David had a fine career as a doctor in Charlotesseville, Virginia, but I’ve yet to learn what Tommy did as a profession.
These photos show PCC cars on the McDonald & Vanderbilt Avenues and Smith Street – Coney Island lines arriving at the West 5th Street “Culver” Coney Island Terminal loops. The location had been the terminal of Culver’s Prospect Park and Coney Island (steam) railroad, and its branch to the ferryboat landing at the westernmost tip of Nortons Point, through the area that became the Sea Gate protected neighborhood.
We rode a Coney Island Avenue – Smith Street car north on Coney Island Avenue to Bartell-Pritchard Square, adjacent to Prospect Park. In the above photo cousin David is crossing in front of the PCC that had brought us from Coney Island. and Tommy Lenthall is hamming it on the streetcar stop standard. I shouted to them that we were to board the Lorimer Peter Witt immediately behind the PCC. The Lorimer Peter Witt took us to the Box Street Graham Avenue stop, at the Crosstown Carhouse, where we transferred again to another Peter Witt on the Graham Line to reach Long Island City.
To be continued
