In November 2017, Thanksgiving to be exact, I embarked on one of my lengthiest forays, walking from Sunset Park to Maspeth. The family had informed me that the Thanksgiving stuff would have to be done on Saturday due to unforeseen circumstances (and it wouldn’t be the last time as the pandemic cost me a couple of Thanksgivings as well). As the weather was near-ideal, severe clear and 45-50 degrees, I took an N train to the 8th Avenue station and set out for Maspeth, walking through Sunset Park, Borough Park, Kensington, Flatbush, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Ridgewood and Maspeth, taking about 6 or 7 hours as darkness enveloped Queens when I finished, a trip of 12 miles. I haven’t used many of the photos from that 12-mile trip yet, but here’s a taster, a look at the temporary local platform at 8th Avenue.
The MTA was doing a long-overdue restoration of the stations along the N line which meant express service only from 8th Avenue south to 86th Street for several months, and then the reverse as the other stations were remodeled. A weakness of Brooklyn Rapid Transit, later the BMT, later the MTA, is that no express stations with center platforms were built on the Sea Beach, today’s N train. I am still mystified at this lack of foresight.
The 8th Avenue stop was “my” stop when I lived at 7th Avenue and 73rd Street at the BQE between 1982 and 1990; I had my choice between using 8th Avenue (N) and Bay Ridge Avenue or 77th Street (R) and it must have turned out 50-50. I had a favorite diner, Zeke’s, at 8th Avenue and 66th Street, where I would invariably eat every Monday evening before heading to Manhattan for the night shift at Photo Lettering. Even after getting a day job elsewhere in 1988, I would simply head for Zeke’s after work.
I still look at that era with nostalgia, though many would be well rid of it. I am unusual that way.
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9/14/23
4 comments
The BMT Sea Beach line, officially the N train since the early 1960s, has a rich history along with the other BMT southern Brooklyn routes. It began as a surface steam railroad in 1877 and derives its name from the Sea Beach Palace Hotel in Coney Island, its original terminus. It was absorbed into the BRT elevated network and electrified in the 1890s, and physically connected to the BRT West End elevated at Bath Junction, where the 62nd Street and New Utrecht Stations stand today. In 1913-15 the line was rebuilt into its current open cut. My guess about the lack of express stations between Coney Island and 59th Street-4th Avenue is because that area was semi-rural in the 19-teens.
The middle tracks were designed to permit express trains to operate to and from Coney Island, which occurred during two periods of its history – 1915-51 on summer Sundays, and 1967-68 as part of a short-lived NX express service. The middle tracks did not have signals, and had to operate using absolute block rules. That meant that once an express train left either Coney Island or 59th Street-4th Avenue another train could not be dispatched behind it until the first train reached its next stop.
More details about the Sea Beach Line are found at this link: https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/BMT_Sea_Beach_Line
Nice piece, thanks!
I’ve always had a soft spot for the 8th Ave station as well.
My parents lived on 73rd between 6th and 7th from ‘85 to 98
You were likely neighbors.
I was on my own living downtown Brooklyn by then, but I
was out every weekend, and we were often at Zeke’s and
the Danish Athletic Club. Also remember a bar called Branches right on 7th, across the walkway.
Wasn’t the 2001 Odyssey nightclub (of Saturday Night Fever fame) right near Zeke’s in the late 70’s?
The 2001 Odyssey nightclub was on the corner of 8th Ave. and 64th Street, across the street from a bowling alley. Before that is was the Club 802 (the address of the building). A local low-rent bar and nightclub.