The East 105th Street station on the Canarsie BMT (the L train) is in a somewhat odd place for a subway stop — a dead end street with empty lots on one side and a Verizon administrative office on the other. The Breukelen Houses projects are a block south of it.
Until 1973 this was the lone grade crossing in the NYC subway system, left over from the days when the Canarsie Line was a steam railroad. The gates were hand-operated, and while there were a few more houses around, this was never a heavily populated area. You can see photos of its grade-crossing days on FNY’s Irresistible Lure of Canarsie page. A dirt road called Turnbull Avenue once ran alongside the tracks; it’s seen clearly here.
In 1974 I started bicycling obsessively all over southern Brooklyn. I found out much later that I had missed seeing this grade crossing by just one year. Since I was an idiot then, I didn’t carry any money with me and, one day when I got a flat tire, I had to hike all the way from Canarsie back to Bay Ridge, wheeling the bike. I did ride on the rim now and then.
2/22/14