1912 plan to link from the 4th ave line, to the SIRR

http://secondavenuesagas.com/2010/11/22/building-a-subway-to-staten-island-with-arc-dollars/

Extra Place

Between the Bowery and 2nd Avenue on 1st Street, a new tiny street juts north for a building or two before it hits dead end. upon first seeing it, I thought it was created by the designers of the new luxury apartment houses. But this story provided delves deep, into before Manhattan was divided by a sensible grid of streets. Extra Street had it's roots traced back that far. I can't help believe that as Manhattan grew safer and more upscale, this little street was fenced off, and privatized. Only now that it is sandwiched in-between big money projects, has it been paved over, and marked as the street it is. Soon stores will move in.

Evolution of Extra Place

Weegee sound bite.

Weegee talks - Old New York hardcore photojournalist.

Bernie Madoff's Home

Via NY Daily News

Most of the money is still not found.

1905 Coney Island Video

Video clip- Boarding School Girls at Coney Island 1905

All around them, are horses and carriages as they board the equivalent of a bus. And once they arrive, we see a few examples of what a different place Coney Island was back then.

Vintage Film 2 -Brooklyn Trolleys

There's some discrepancy as to weather these are all 30's or if some parts are 40's. Some commenters' say these are during the last years of the Brooklyn trolley cars.

Not sure weather its there any longer, some photos from this flickr user, in Red Hook.

Abandoned Trolley Car found in Red Hook, Brooklyn,

originally uploaded by themechanism.

And a context shot-

Sun-Kissed Trolley, originally uploaded by mkaggen.

Or a shot from above -here-

Now in San Francisco, this Flickr member says that this car was painted with the New York Paint scheme, but it actually serviced Philadelphia:

San Francisco: Streetcar, originally uploaded by sowellman.

old film

Found this on Youtube, excellent stuff: Harold Lloyd and Babe Ruth.

An excellent example of how many things change, but some things always stay the same. Our impression of the crazy taxi drivers seems to have its roots at the very beginning of the automobile. Back then many city buses were double deckers, and one didn't go so far to be in a place considered the country: The Bronx. It looks as though there were very few, if any, traffic lights. More police to maintain some sense of order at these intersections. Trolleys everywhere, more elevated trains. As the cars were fairly modern, no lines in the roads, free for all, a mere suggestion of staying to the right. and we wonder why the streets are so chaotic, this is the root of it.

Locations -

-Times Square

-Maybe Herald Square

-Then 5th Avenue

-Yankee Stadium of course

Then in the horse bit-

-Bowling Greene

-U.S. Customs House

-One Broadway

-Washington Square Park

-The Woolworth Building in the background of Bowling Greene

-Brooklyn Bridge

-Manhattan Bridge behind it

-And I'm guessing the Lower East Side by the docks, which would be Fulton Street?

Conceptualizing and Realizing Different Transit in America

This full PBS documentary examines the two contrasting cities of Denver and Portland, and then finally examines the city with an infrastructure with a little of both, New York.

Blueprint America: Road to the Future

A very interesting examination of how a city might be effected by its transit plan.

Brooklyn Trolley Outline

As I think I've said before, the goal of this blog of mine is to gather info on all transportation, all history, and while were at it, future bits and pieces that will indicate, my thesis is, indicate how New York City has evolved. Hopefully I'll get maps of where the streets and buildings were every 50 to a hundred years and eventually make maps showing the progress of the city. What is most interesting to me is the progression and/or regression of the transit system.

The Second Avenue Sagas post on this particular article finds a connection to the past within a concept in the future, and an entire map of proposed trolley routes through Brooklyn that would locally serve the borough where the subway lines miss it.
2nd Ave. Sagas: Future Travel: A Desire Named Streetcar

Manahatta

If you have time, you have to go to the Museum of the City of New York, and see the exhibit about how The island of Manhattan would have looked in the year 1609. From assembled maps, mainly from the British army I think. The project I think also has a book. This is the root of everything I wish this blog to be:  

THE MANAHATTA PROJECT 

Go there and find an interactive map displaying the marshes, hills, forests, lakes, streams, and the natural sculpting of the island before the landfill. You can find any address there and see what was once there, before the west came and "civilized" it. 

Dr. Sanderson on in interview on wnyc's Leonard Lopate Show, says he believes it the island of Manahatta were preserved today, it would be one of the nation's greatest national parks. I could go on and on, but to do that I'd have to read on and on, there is so much information in the site! I imagine I will continue to read or reference this document:

“Mannahatta: an ecological first look at the Manhattan landscape prior to Henry Hudson.” Northeastern Naturalist 14(4): 545-570. pdf

Randall's Island and the former Downing Stadium

My connection to the island goes back to all my endeavors in extra curricular sports during my public school education. Back in the 6th grade me and some other friends strayed from the group and toured the dark corridors of Downing Stadium, sneaking through rusted walls and long forgotten concession stands.

I came back to the stadium several times more with a track team that I joined separately from high school. It was the only place where I'd ever done so well as to have gained 2nd place. That alone was an experience like no other, one member of my team was up in the stands shouting his lungs out the whole time, as if he knew before I did, that when I came around the short side of the turn on the 200 meters, I was going to have a chance to win a heat. The grass in the middle of the track was a mix of green and brown, lumpy but soft, and all the markings on the tracks were faded like a pair of coveted blue jeans. When the short number of seconds was finished, I felt as though I was on some other level of time. My small chest was pounding like a humming-bird's, the two sticks I called legs trembled. The only place for my arms was to stabilize them on my waste, otherwise my entire equilibrium would have disappeared.

I then came back to the stadium a few times more after I graduated high school, only this time it was for photography, and for the dedicated attempt to document it before it was torn down. See the stadium no longer exists now, replaced now by Icahn Stadium. This stadium's cost was in the millions, 5 million I think. Downing Stadium had a crowd capacity quadrupling that of the new Icahn, and faux Roman style which gave it a soul. The new Icahn, while meeting modern standards in track and field quality, clearly was aiming a lot lower than the former stadium when it came to size, and style. But alas, this is how the world has always operated, rather than renovating the old stadium, just build a new one, smaller, and less classy. Downing Stadium had a few moments in history. Duke Ellington played there, so did Jimi Hendrix, and when the stadium was used for time trials for the 1936 Olympics, Jesse Owens ran there in front of a crowd of 45,000 people, in anticipation of his athletic statement against the Nazis. 

Jesse Owens starting his 200 in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. -Wikipedia

Me and a friend re-explored the old stadium and I upon shooting, came back and shot some more, and some more again. I was a little lost at the time, and I feel that if I hadn't gone there to shoot pictures, I wouldn't have gained such a sense of myself. Being alone, just two people in the vastness of the horse-shoed concrete mass, I felt as though I actually found a purpose. Without such an experience, I wouldn't have made the decision to attend college to major in photography.

Color Photography- 2001

The south Island - Ward's Island-

The winds would whip so fiercely on the Island, which splits the East river into two quadrants. As the river heads up and goes through the narrower Harlem River where it finds the Hudson, or to the right where it comes back to the Atlantic via the Long Island Sound. The south point of Randall's or Ward's Island is thus called Hell's Gate. But despite it's bad reputation with the sea farers or the thinly clad island visitors, the views were fantastic. In the 11th grade I played soccer at the most southeastern field. To the north adjacent to the field stood, and stands, the Hell's Gate Bridge, one of the most beautiful Bridges in the City, and to the east and the south, was the rippling river, and the skyline of Queens. But now that part of the island is being reconstructed.

The whole Southwest portion is completely redone. And all the maintenance and renovation has been funded by the most affluent private schools of New York, in exchange for their exclusive use during prime hours in which the public schools used to use the island.

Someday this blog will begin

someday, maybe I'll have time to dedicate to this blog. I'll write and map about the history of the city's subway systems, the trolleys, all the infrastructure, and show maps of the progress of development of The city/cities of greater new york. Oh the possibilities and opportunities for education are endless, I can write about the history of the old millionaires of NYC, where the street names come from, the immigration populations, the neighborhood vibes, what's changed, what's stayed constant. The history of the taxi, the buses, the street plans (light patterns, grids, addresses, traffic management), And of course, of course, all the proposals that never came to be, for good, for bad, for the in between, the baseball teams, and i guess all the other sports too. And the run on, and incomplete sentences and sentence fragments. But for now, You'll have to make due with my links on the right side.