![]() Or maybe subterranean roller coaster cars didn’t move people as efficiently as a subway car could. So why didn’t the idea fly? Perhaps the subway companies had too much political clout to let it happen. Widely debated in newspapers at the time, it went no where: Mayor Seth Low killed the project.īut it popped back up again around 1910, this time as a network of moving sidewalks at a top speed of about 10 miles per hour that would replace the new subway system. The idea was first proposed in 1871, then more seriously in 1902 for the Brooklyn Bridge. It probably sounded like a civilized solution to the increasingly congested New York City of the 19th century: to ease crowded streets, “moving sidewalks” or “moving platforms” would be built underground. Posted in Brooklyn, Disasters and crimes, Poets and writers, Random signage | 6 Comments » Tags: Barbary Coast Brooklyn, Brooklyn bridge, Brooklyn in the 19th century, Brooklyn Street, Columbia Heights Brooklyn, Hart Crane, Hell's Half Acre, Literary Brooklyn, rough Brooklyn, Sands Street Brooklyn, The Bridge Hart Crane More than once he came home beaten and bloodied.”Ĭrane committed suicide in 1932, leaving behind his poem “The Bridge,” an ode to the Brooklyn Bridge-which he was able to see from his apartment and perhaps Sands Street as well. “Cruising was a dangerous pursuit for Crane in a time of rampant homophobia. “With Emil away at sea a lot and their relationship intermittent, Crane walked down to Sands Street searching for sex to share in a rendezvous meant not to last,” writes Evan Hughes in his wonderful book Literary Brooklyn. Struggling young poet Hart Crane (below), an Ohio transplant living just a short walk away at 110 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights, regularly visited Sands Street in the 1920s. ![]() It also appealed to less rough-and-tumble New Yorkers craving a dangerous thrill. Lined with saloons, rooming houses, gambling dens, and tattoo parlors, Sands Street catered to sailors from the Navy Yard and the East River waterfront. In the late 19th century, it was Brooklyn’s red-light district, so seedy it earned two evocative nicknames: locals called it the “Barbary Coast” in the 19th century and then “Hell’s Half Acre” through the 1950s. Sands Street today is an unremarkable stretch through the Farragut Houses in Dumbo.īut this beachy-sounding street has a very colorful history. ![]()
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