I was in DUMBO in Brooklyn on the first hot day of the year in the spring in 2017 and happened upon this photo shoot on Plymouth Street. Many newcomers to the area mistake the tracks in the street for old disused trolley tracks; however, in the trolley days, the nearest lines ran on Sands, Prospect and High Streets a few blocks to the south. In the 19th and 20th Centuries DUMBO was almost entirely given over to warehousing and manufacturing (except for the small Vinegar Hill neighborhood on the eastern end) trolley lines never troubled it north of Sands Street.
One clue that these were never trolley lines is that several pairs run on sidewalks and into buildings. These tracks belonged to the Jay Street Connecting Railroad, one of the shortest rail lines in Brooklyn. It was originally constructed (beginning in 1904) by the Arbuckle Brothers, who imported coffee from far-flung regions; it was unloaded from carfloats in the East River (not for nothing are there two streets in DUMBO called Dock and New Dock). Goods were shuttled into warehouses a lofts in the streets of DUMBO via the tracks. The JSCR ran its last load in 1959.
Unfortunately The Department of Transportation, acceding to the wishes of bicyclists, is gradually removing DUMBO’s signature RR tracks and Belgian-blocked streets, in some cases replacing them with flat top brickwork that isn’t fooling anyone. That has already happened on the portion of Plymouth Street seen above that faces Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Other Brooklyn freight RRs were the Cross Harbor, in Sunset Park and Willliamsburg, the South Brooklyn, which ran from Sunset Park to Coney Island and the New York Dock Railway, which ran west of Furman Street in what is now Brooklyn Bridge Park. I featured those railroads in this 2001 FNY page.
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5/17/23