The Municipal Archives and the City Hall Library are housed in the Surrogate’s Courthouse on Chamber Street at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. I previously visited the building for meetings, events, and to admire the architecture, but never explored the archives. I recalled working only one block away in the mayor’s office, when my old boss asked me to compile important publications from the last five years to pack in a box and send over to the old Hall of Records.
She explained how they catalog all government agency, mayoral initiative, and city council proceeding documents. The building has a long history as a city government hub – even the morning of my recent visit the landmark lobby was setup for a mayoral press conference. But that day my focus was on the transportation policies of the Mayor Lindsay Administration and the efforts of the New York City Council that approved the closure of the Myrtle Avenue El.
I had a few leads found through online database searches, including a source from the time entitled, “Minutes of a meeting of the Council as a whole and the Committee on Mass Transit and Arterial Highways individually: complete with agenda.” The book was filled with agendas and meeting notes from 1966-1968, but made no mention of the Myrtle Avenue El. It instead offered insight into the priorities of city government in the late 1960s, which included highway expansion and urban renewal. The meeting description read, “The Chairman stated that the time had come to establish permanent subcommittee to continue the Council’s work related to arterial highway planning, mass transit planning, and interchange between different forms, facilities, and vehicles of transportation.” Did the extensive highway planning of the era somehow directly affect the destruction of the El? Who were the members of this new committee? The source led me to search individual council members and reports referenced in the meetings.
The library and archive had more resources on site than online, so I continued my search for more sources using my long list of key words. I found other interesting sources including, “Mayor Lindsay’s White Paper: A Modern Transportation System for New York City” and “Report to the New York City Transit Authority: Demolition of Third Avenue Elevated Line South of 149th Street” that led to more questions. Why was there a report on the Third Avenue El in Manhattan, but not the Myrtle Avenue El in Brooklyn? Was a Myrtle Avenue report ever written or was it perhaps missing or located in another archive? Nevertheless, the Third Avenue report offered a great deal of insight into the perspectives of those involved in the widespread elevated train demolitions across the city. The generally accepted reasons included declining ridership, financial losses and budget constraints, alternative routes, and the potential for increased real estate value.
I also found Brooklyn community reference guides from the late 1960s that led me to specific organizations and staff names that were active at that time, including the Pratt Center for Community Improvement and Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council. One book cover caught my attention, “Deghettoization” it read in large letters – a 1968 publication focused on housing and city planning. I plan to return the library next week to continue to review about a dozen sources that the library set aside for my future visit.
Later, I found a second archive with a greater focus on the New York City Council’s history. I quickly emailed the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at La Guardia Community College, part of the City University of New York. I requested a document entitled “Transit Authority, Demolish the Myrtle Avenue Railway,” and the archive swiftly responded. Though the source offered less information than I hoped, it offered a specific date, the names of city council members, the name of relevant committees, and the language used to justify the demolition. Resolution Number 190, passed in March 1, 1966 read,
This dilapidated and deteriorating elevated line is an eyesore and blight upon the neighborhood; and Whereas, In the Demoralizing shadow of its gloomy canopy there is cultivated an atmosphere of decay, depravity, dereliction and crime, exposing the community’s health well being, security and economy to its ravages…
Slowly, all of these documents are coming together to recreate the decision-making process that led to the destruction of the El. I still have to find the people to whom the El was more than just a “gloomy canopy.” Next up in the archival research is the Metropolitan Transit Authority Museum archive, the Brooklyn Historical Society, Pratt Institute, and interviews with community members that can still remember the vanished El.