The introduction of public transportation systems in New York City and Brooklyn took place during a period of over eighty years. Travel by horseback and personal carriage gave way to stagecoaches called omnibuses, followed by street cars drawn by horses and later by steam engines. Elevated rail lines employing small steam locomotives were constructed next, and the invention of electricity made it possible to build electric trolleys. Subways and gas powered buses were the last major form of transportation.

CONNECTING MANHATTAN AND BROOKLYN
Ferries
When our first relatives arrived in the 1840s and 1850s, steamboat ferries were the only transport between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Between 1840 and 1845 the population of Brooklyn doubled to nearly 80,000 people. In the 1850s a fleet of six ferries made 1,250 ferry crossings a day from Williamsburg to Peck Slip every ten minutes and every five minutes to Grand Street. In 1854 a one-way trip was a penny but was raised to 2 cents. In 1860, 40% of Brooklyn wage earners worked in New York City and the East River ferries carried nearly 33 million passengers. By 1870 the number had increased to 50 million. One can only imagine the congestion on the East River with ocean traffic entering and leaving the harbors, while maneuvering around the ferries crossing the River. The ferries can be considered the first mode of mass transportation. The last commercial ferry line crossing the East River shut down in 1925, although other ferries continued to connect the City with Jersey City, Weehawken, Hoboken and other locations.

Brooklyn Bridge
As the situation became more untenable on the East River, The New York Bridge Company was founded in 1865 to look into a bridge to connect New York City and Brooklyn. John Roebling had originally proposed a suspension bridge over the East River in 1855, and it was he who worked out every detail of the bridge. Construction on the Brooklyn Bridge began January 3, 1870, and was opened on May 24, 1883. The bridge cost $15.1 million to build, and $3.8 million of that sum was for the purchase of land needed for the approaches. The main span is 1,595 feet long, the longest for any suspension bridge in the world at that time. Each of the four cables is 3,578 feet, and each cable contains 5,434 wires.

Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge to carry a load of 18,700 tons. Two elevated railroad tracks down the center of the bridge would connect to the elevated railroad systems in New York and Brooklyn. These tracks were flanked by two outside lanes on each side for use by carriages and horseback riders, and directly over the tracks was an elevated promenade for pedestrians and bicyclists.

More than 14,000 people were invited to the opening to attend the official dedication of the bridge by President Chester Arthur and Governor Grover Cleveland. The toll was one penny, and on the first day the bridge carried trolley lines, horse-drawn vehicles and even livestock. In 1884 P.T. Barnum paraded 21 elephants across the bridge to demonstrate its safety. Today the bridge carries approximately 145,000 vehicles per day on six lanes.

In 1898 the bridge was reconfigured to allow both trolleys and automobiles to travel in the outer four lanes. In 1944 the elevated railroad trains that ran along the interior of the bridge stopped service and the trolleys were moved from the outer shared lanes to the elevated tracks. Not longer afterward, the trolleys stopped running, the elevated tracks were removed and the roadways were rebuilt for vehicular traffic.

After the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge several other bridges were built between Manhattan and Brooklyn, but none could compare to the Brooklyn Bridge. The Williamsburg Bridge opened in 1903, the Queensboro Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge in 1909, and last, the Hell Gate Bridge in 1917.

GETTING AROUND NEW YORK CITY
Stagecoaches and Horse-Drawn Street Cars
The first public transportation in New York City was started in 1827 by Abraham Brower. It was a twelve-seat stagecoach called “Accommodation” which ran along Broadway from the Battery to Blecker Street. Service was expanded by 1831 with the addition of the “Sociable” and “Omnibus.” The following year the New York and Harlem Railroad began operation. It was a street railway that used horse drawn cars with metal wheels running on metal tracks. In 1864 the number of passengers carried on the New York and Harlem Railroad amounted to 5,795,238.

During the 1840s additional railroad service was provided, most notably by the New York and New Haven Railroad and the Hudson River Railroad. Horse-drawn extensions merged with steam powered lines in a network of railways. By 1855 there were 593 “omnibuses” traveling on 27 Manhattan routes and the horse-drawn cars ran on street railways on 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 8th Avenues. Because of the innumerable complaints of noise, pollution, traffic and chronic accidents, steam locomotives were banned from crowded areas below 42nd street by 1858.

Steam locomotives
In 1867 horses were replaced by steam, which brought new problems to the citizens of Manhattan. Conflicts arose from street level railroads operating in crowded neighborhoods. The lethal mix of industry and humanity earned Tenth Avenue the nickname Death Avenue. On the High Line, the West Side railroad, young men rode horses one block in front of the trains, waving a red flag by day and a red light by night. They rode the two mile stretch for more than 80 years beginning in 1850. It was determined that the tracks must be raised and a deadline was set for May 1, 1909, which came and went with neither elevation nor condemnation.

Elevated Rail lines
The first elevated rail line was constructed up Greenwich Street, then North Avenue, from Battery Place to 30th Street. It ran from 1868 through 1870 and was further extended to 30th Street. It ran on a cable system that proved impractical and was fully abandoned until new investors were found. They discarded all the previous equipment and replaced it with steam locomotives, beginning operation in April 1871. Named the New York Elevated Railroad Company it was the world’s first successful elevated railway. Further extensions were added over the decades, but the changing landscape of the city created their own problems.


The 9th Avenue El was over 100 feet above the street and made a 90 degree turn from 9th Avenue onto 110th Street, called “Suicide Curve,” and another from 110th Street onto 8th Avenue.



Electric Trolleys
Toward the end of the century electric trolley cars were developed and they soon replaced the horse-drawn omnibuses. Trolley bus lines used overhead lines for power eliminating the need for tracks.

Subway
The first underground rail was a 312 foot tunnel under lower Broadway that ran a subway car from 1870 to 1873. However, it was not until October 1904 that the first official subway system began operation in New York City. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) operated the 9.1 mile long subway line of 28 stations running from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway. Service was extended to the Bronx in 1905, to Brooklyn in 1908, and to Queens in 1915. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) began service between Brooklyn and Manhattan in 1915. Coincidental with the advent of the subway was the introduction of gasoline-powered buses and open-top double-deckers in 1907, which ran between Washington Square and 90th Street.