Once upon a time, before the subways took us underground and cars took over aboveground, New York City’s travel landscaped was marked by railroad trains. These trains snaked through Outer Boroughs and carried well-to-do city denizens to their beachfront country homes, miles away from the hustle and bustle of busy Manhattan. These days, those railroads are lost to time as rampant urban expansion, but their rights of ways live on in quirky fashion.
Over the weekend, The Times unearthed a block-long right of way from the dearly departed Manhattan Beach Branch of the New York and Manhattan Beach Railway, a predecessor to the Long Island Rail Road. A bunch of homeowners along E. 18th St. between Avenues U and V enjoy backyards that are actually a part of the railroad’s right of way. The homeowners are filing suit to claim title to the now-defunct railroad lane via adverse possession, and it doesn’t sound as though the MTA, the railway’s predecessor in interest, plans to spend too much time contesting the suit.
The Manhattan Beach Railway, as this old map shows, once delivered residents from the Greenpoint ferry terminal to Manhattan Beach. The railway ceased carrying passengers in 1924, and today, the Brighton Line runs just a few blocks west. Before the suit was filed, few of the residents even knew a railroad once past behind their houses, and I wonder how many other rights of ways for city railways exist in backyards around Manhattan and Queens.
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With the crazy pace of development in the early 20th Century, I’d imagine there’s not much left in Queens, and with the tight zoning allowed in Manhattan, there are no back yards or alleys to speak of.
Forgotten NY did an article regarding old ROW’s in Queens a few years ago:
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/SU.....stone.html
They also did a similar article for abandoned RR lines on Staten Island:
http://www.forgotten-ny.com/SUBWAYS/SIRT/sirt.html
Hmmm..I know that they are strapped for cash, but I truly hope that they are not going to chase down this one.
There’s nothing to chase down. The party losing land in an adverse possession case can’t claim any damages.
Bushwick has an “Old Railroad Grade Alley” (see Google map here). Sadly, it’s not a through route, but you can s till see rails crossing the streets between fenced in lots. Still rather industrial, including at least one supplier of anthracite. I took some ground level pics if anyone wants.
From the satellite view, it looks like it was single tracked before being abandoned sometime in the 20th century.
Use http://gis.nyc.gov/doitt/nycitymap/ it has 1951 and 1923 aerial photos of all of NYC.
Thanks, that is neat.
Although the line on the embankment adjacent to the Brighton Line ceased operation in 1924, the line in question operated at grade two blocks to the east and ceased operation in 1907. It was replaced by the line placed on the embankment the same time the embankment was also built for the Brighton Line (1907). I wrote about this earlier in the week. http://www.sheepsheadbites.com.....you-money/
I know you like to think that everything is the fault of the MTA’s inept bureaucratic bungling, but if I may be so bold: Your legal analysis in the Sheepshead Bites piece is wrong. Because of adverse possession laws, this land was basically not the property of the Long Island Rail Road’s long before the MTA even came into existence. New York has a 10-year adverse possession statutory requirement, and the railroad was abandoned in 1924. I’m sure you could find stories of this type of abandonment throughout the city.
Furthermore, considering the land was probably granted as an easement for railroad use, it’s questionable as to whether or not the LIRR could have legally sold it back to homeowners or if title simply reverted back to them when the easement expired. Either way, nothing that had anything to do with the MTA there.
The real bureaucratic issue is, in my opinion, the fact that the MTA shouldn’t spend a dime trying to defend this lawsuit. That would be waste.
How could my legal analysis be wrong, when I never made any legal analysis? All I said was that it will be up to the courts to decide should the MTA make an issue of it. It was the MTA spokesman quoted in the NY Times who made the legal analysis stating he believed the LIRR still technically owned the land. He is the one you should be taking issue with not me. As far as your conclusion that the MTA shouldn’t spend a dime defending this lawsuit, you are correct, because all indications show they would probably lose.
So why are you criticizing me? As far as believing that everything is the fault of MTA’s inept bureaucratic bungling, how could I believe this in this case when the MTA wasn’t even around in 1907 when this took place? (Not in 1924 as you inaccurately state.)
But I do believe that MTA bungling or rather lack of well-thought out planning is much more prevalent than you would like to admit. For example, you seemed to agree with the MTA that it makes sense to retrofit older cars with electronic information similar to the newer cars and are a big fan of those countdown clocks. Some of your readers made some very good points that at stations like Penn Station the clocks would be more useful if they were placed in the mezzanine rather than on the center platform so riders could use the information to decide whether to take the local or the express. Another suggestion was to place them outside of the station at places where you could take a bus instead, although there might be problems with that because they would be affected by the weather. In any case, it should have at least been looked into.
Personally, I think the money could be better spent on painting stations or repairing or cleaning tile that hasn’t had any work done on them in over 20 years. A friend of mine hates the clocks because she thinks it only gives the MTA license to lengthen the headways because we don’t really need them when trains arrive in under 5 minutes anyway.
Their bus planning is even worse. Ridiculous to not allow transfers between SBS and the local or a third transfer to a crosstown bus or set up situations where you can transfer in one direction but not in the reverse (B4 and B68).
But you seem to feel that only if the MTA had more funding all its problems would be solved.
yes that was a fascinating article.
it’s possible to trace trackbeds peeling off the LIRR in many places. i have no idea about the legal status, but they’re catnip for urban archaeology types.