A BROOKLYN BLVD. BENEATH THE SEA (1910)
Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes.
The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
Do you know the history of YOUR house?
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Following the turn of the last century, after the Brooklyn Bridge had gone up connecting New York City to Brooklyn’s borough, the former “City of Homes and Churches,” as a direct result, started to experience phenomenal growth.
By 1909 the Manhattan Bridge was opening to address the overflow of Brooklyn residents needing another way of getting in and out of Manhattan.
This growth caused New York politicians to start thinking about a way to spur that same growth on Staten Island by establishing an easier way of moving between these two boroughs.
Before talk of a bridge began, though, there was talk of a grand tunnel.
Towards the end of the decade, that talk got more serious and front pages like the one above began to earnestly ask the question, “Just how will we travel between Brooklyn and Staten Island?”
A tunnel gained early traction and the city’s commissioners began to look seriously at its feasibility.
In the New York Tribune, it was posited that such a tunnel would keep our residents’ dollars within the city limits by restricting their ability to travel elsewhere and not letting them “get away to Jersey or Westchester.”
“A tunnel 100 feet wide and 10,000 feet long,” the paper noted, “easy of approach at either end for vehicular traffic of all kinds,” was the vision.
We all know how this story ends. Instead of a tunnel, a bridge was built. The dream of a tunnel, though, brought about a lot of conversations about that “Boulevard Under the Sea.”
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Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
