NOT many physical relics or manifestations remain of the original World Trade Center Twin Towers (1971-2001), except in photographs and memories. However, here’s a remembrance, in a very old peak-roofed wood frame building at #975 McDonald Avenue under the Culver elevated at Webster Avenue. My bet is that the bagel shop was founded soon after 9/11/01 and the owners are memorializing it and the many victims of the terrorist attack in their own way.
In a July 2024 post, I discussed place names of barely remembered people in NYC such as Horace Harding and Henry Bruckner. Well…there are two of them right here in this obscure Brooklyn corner. The elevated Culver Line was named for a rail entrepreneur named Andrew Culver (1832-1906). In 1875, Culver founded and built a steam railroad that ran from the Green-Wood Cemetery entrance at Prospect Park West and 20th Street and then ran straight down 20th Street to 10th Avenue and then south on Gravesend Avenue, later named McDonald Avenue, to Coney Island. After experiencing poor heath he sold the Prospect Park and Coney Island RR, as it was called, to the Long Island rail Road in 1893. When a third rail was added in 1899, the LIRR ceased operations on the line and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Co. was reorganized into the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company, later the BMT, which took it over. As the region became more built up the line was elevated over Gravesend Avenue in 1919 and in common parlance became “the Culver Line.”
When the IND extended its line in Kensington to connect with the Culver Line in the 1950s, the section of the el connecting with the West End Line was orphaned and became the Culver Shuttle, which ran until 1975; its structure was torn down 10 years later.
Meanwhile, what had been previously named Gravesend Avenue was renamed McDonald Avenue in the 1930s. John McDonald was Chief Clerk of the Kings County Surrogates’ Court who died suddenly in 1932 when a chicken bone perforated an intestine. With apologies to the surviving McDonalds, by 2024, it’s an obscure man in an even obscurer office that’s remembered today.
As a kid, I was amazed when I took a bus ride (The B9?) with either mom or dad down 60th Street and discovered an elevated train over McDonald Avenue! I knew it only from its open-air section where the B16 bus on Caton Avenue crossed it.
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7/31/24
10 comments
Meanwhile, that Express Services building next door looks like it’s been around a couple two hundred years 🙂
1940s same buildings different view.
https://1940s.nyc/map/photo/nynyma_rec0040_3_05415_0001#17.5/40.630121/-73.976805
In October 1954, the IND subway was extended south of its original Church Ave. underground terminal, onto the ramp that leads to the old BMT Culver Line station at Ditmas and McDonald Avenues. It’s interesting to see that modern 21st century trains on the F line still display “Culver Local” on their electronic destination signs. Andrew Culver is buried in Brooklyn at nearby Greenwood Cemetery, so the trains pass near his resting place. I am sure that very few riders know the origin of the name Culver or even care, and even think that it’s a street name that has long disappeared.
The other three ex-BMT routes that serve Coney Island still display their historical route names as well, on the current MTA subway map. West End derives from the line’s original terminal at the west end of Coney Island; Sea Beach originated from the name of the long-gone Sea Beach Palace Hotel; Brighton of course derives from the beach of the same name, in turn borrowed from a beach community in England about an hour outside of London. All examples of a forgotten New York that still lives on the subway system. Thanks for bringing up this historical nugget.
There are a lot of older drawings of the Manhattan skyline that still include the Twin Towers in them. Some of them include the model skyline at Citifield that sits above Shake Shack as well the logos for the NYPD and FDNY. There are probably some others that might still have them as well. However, I really wish that they really were rebuilt rather than having what we wound up, because I feel that would have sent a real message to have back what was taken from us that day whereas what we have now just feels as if we did let them finish the job of having them gone.
While it would have been great to have an exact replacement, the design of those original buildings would not likely meet current building code standards.
Many of those such as myself who wanted the Twin Towers rebuilt did actually want them better modified, plus older buildings can be renovated to have updated standard codes, so such a thing is possible for this.
As a matter of fact, after the wreckage was cleared a certain then TV personality & real estate entrepreneur suggested rebuilding the WTC without changing its appearance but merely reversing the”foot prints”:
https://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/05/18/wtc.trump/
RSR,
Am having trouble getting that link to show the video or the gallery (my browser’s fault), and the text of the article doesn’t specifically say, so can you provide a short version: why did the entrepreneur wish to reverse the footprints? That is very interesting, but I can’t guess at a reason why it would be suggested.
I heard that construction workers working on the World Trade Center back in ’71 were
amazed and flabbergasted by the cheap way the place was put together
I grew up in the Parkville neighborhood in the 50’s-60’s. I can remember when the trolley ran down McDonald Ave. beneath the elevated line. Freight trains used to leave the Parkville Yard of the South Brooklyn Railway (or was it the Bay Ridge Branch of the LIRR?) at McDonald and Ave I, and run south on the old trolley tracks to make deliveries. It was quite a sight to see cars trying to pass the slow moving train! I must have walked by the building pictured dozens of times on my way to the Culver Theatre on 18th Ave and Mcdonald. I lived a few blocks over on Foster Ave.for a while after I got married, before taking a job with IBM upstate in 1968, leaving for good. Brooklyn in those days was a great place to grow up!