A long-abandoned trolley terminal has been hiding in plain sight at the eastbound platform of the Essex Street Station serving J and M trains on the Nassau Street BMT plying the Williamsburg Bridge, where it joins the Broadway Brooklyn el and heads south and east to Jamaica. It served as a terminal for numerous trolley lines from Brooklyn during the years 1903-1948 that crossed the adjacent Williamsburg Bridge, making it one of a handful of underground trolley stations or terminals; another was at the Manhattan end of the Queensboro Bridge. Most of the trolley lines that turned around here wound up in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Here’s a look at the trolley terminal when it was still lit, during or shortly after service ended. Photo via Joe Brennan’s comprehensive Abandoned Subway Stations page, which amazingly is older than this very website.
Here’s a closer look at the abandoned trolley tracks. Photos: Mike Fagan in 1999.
In 2012, a plan emerged for the the space to be turned into a park, a la the West Side High Line. Like the Queens Link that’s supposed to replace the LIRR Rockaway Branch in Queens, nothing will happen on this front.
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10/4/23