We don’t have time machines. Oh, the changes I’d make if I could go back in time. However, we do have photographs, archives and maps to show us what things looked like long ago. (Going back even further, we have fossils, but enough about me.) What you see here is an excerpt of southern Brooklyn from one of the first road maps ever made in the auto age, by Rand McNally in 1904. You can download the entire thing for free and zoom in to your heart’s content.
The thing you notice immediately is empty space. This was before every square inch was gridded out and before the streets were built. By 1904 they had been mapped, but not yet constructed. So there were scattered grids here and there. Main roads are red lines. Coney Island was still indeed an island at the time. amazingly a lot of the town names, such as Fort Hamilton, Bay Ridge, New Utrecht, are still in use today, but not Locust Grove (named for the tree, not the bug), Guntherville, Unionville. Two major racetracks were still in existence in Coney Island and Gravesend.
The black lines on the map are steam railroads, the West End (the Brooklyn, Bath and Coney Island RR), Sea Beach, Brooklyn and Brighton Beach, and Manhattan Beach Railroads. The rights of way of all of these except the Manhattan Beach are in existence today; by 1920 they had been converted to elevated subways, subways in open cuts, or freight railroads in open cuts.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
6/11/25
6 comments
I grew up in a house at 2218 East 18th Street. Our house was set back on the property due to the Manhattan Beach RR running trough. (Still on Google maps.) As a kid I found a railroad tie in our yard — I still have it.
Ray, very neat — there doesn’t seem to be a ton of info about that branch, or especially about the spur that went to the Sheepshead Bay racetrack. Kinda wild to see how far back that house sits from the street today, now that other things have popped up around it. BTW what have you done with that RR tie? Aren’t those things a lot heavier than they look? 🙂
Great map! In the full map (use the link Kevin gave) just outside the city, east of Far Rockaway, notice the short-lived Cedarhurst Railroad, from Woodsburg (now Woodmere). Its right of way is preserved as: Wood Lane, Keene Lane, and Railroad Avenue. It was planned to go farther south to the “Isle of Wight”. More in Seyfried’s Long Island history book 6.
Vincent Seyfried’s history of the Long Island Rail Road is, without doubt, an amazing story of the growth of Long Island. It tells of the railroad came to be, both politically and physically. He explains why hills are no longer there and how massive rail yards came to be constructed.
To continue this trip back in time, some of the neighborhoods on this map also appear in this 2019 essay by Kevin.
In 2010, Kevin reported on Unionville and Guntherville
He covered Blythebourne in 2017 and in 2000.
He visited South Greenfield in 2002.
I’m glad that you called it “southern Brooklyn” because, as we all know, South Brooklyn is in “northern Brooklyn”!