The road now known as Coney Island Avenue has been in existence since the early 1820s, when a north-south road was laid out in eastern Gravesend running south to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1850, it was considerably lengthened, with wood planks laid out to assist wagon traffic, from about 16th Street southeast and south to the ocean; it was tolled and named the Coney Island Plank Road. The toll lasted until 1876, when the Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad built tracks for a horsecar line that would bring passengers from Prospect Park south to seaside resorts at Coney Island. The route was electrified as a trolley route in 1890, and lasted until 1955. The B68 bus on the present Coney Island Avenue follows the old trolley route nearly exactly.
Coney Island Avenue today runs through Kensington, Parkville, western Midwood, eastern Gravesend, and Coney Island. A couple of decades after the Coney Island Plank Road was extended north to the Prospect Park area, a new street grid was built in southeast Brooklyn and what had been farmland became urbanized. For most of its length, Coney Island Avenue stands in for East 11th Street, though it’s truly parallel to the grid only between Foster Avenue and Kings Highway.
This view looks north on Coney Island Avenue from the Belt Parkway, and the elevation is high enough to view midtown Manhattan. I recognize the King of All Buildings on the left, and the Chrysler Building center right, but help me out here — what’s the building just west of the Chrysler?
4/25/14