GAHS STORE

Books

Images

Merchandise

PRESERVATION NEWS

July 11, 2003—New York Times

Bell Tolls for a Reminder of Trolleys Past
By David W. Dunlap

Listen closely over the din of traffic at the Queensboro Bridge and you just may hear it. The last clang.

But listen soon. Because the City Transportation Department hopes to remove one of the few architectural remnants of the once-sprawling trolley system: an elegant but battered kiosk on Second Avenue through which passengers boarded Queensboro Bridge Railway Company cars until April 7, 1957, when the final trolley in New York City rattled across from Queens Plaza.

Few New York landmarks hide in plainer sight than this little white terra-cotta structure with green ornamental trim. It sits on a broad apron at the foot of the bridge but is virtually unnoticed in the flow of traffic around and above it. (The Roosevelt Island tramway terminal is just across the avenue.)

Traffic is precisely the problem, said Tom Cocola, assistant commissioner for public affairs at the transportation agency. That explains why two terra-cotta bays at the northeast corner have been knocked out completely.

"The kiosk, unfortunately, has been involved in at least three accidents over the last five years," Mr. Cocola wrote in an e-mail message this week. "In all accidents, we believe a truck hit it."

On July 22, transportation officials will ask the Landmarks Preservation Commission for approval to dismantle the kiosk and reuse it someplace else.

Where?

"We are open to any ideas, thoughts and suggestions," Mr. Cocola said, particularly from the landmarks commission and the Parks Department.

Amy L. Freitag, the deputy parks commissioner for capital projects, said the structure might have a place among the 26 historical buildings set around the 83-acre grounds of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island. But she, too, said she welcomed other notions for reusing the kiosk.

And Mr. Cocola left open the possibility of restoring the structure in place. Preservationists, of course, recommend exactly that.

"I just don't see why they should be permitted to remove the last bit of historic fabric from that poor bridge," said Jeffrey A. Kroessler, author of "New York Year by Year: A Chronology of the Great Metropolis" (New York University Press, 2002). "What else says that trolleys once ran over this bridge and that this bridge wasn't designed for automobiles?"

If the kiosk had to be moved, said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, perhaps it could be shifted closer to the tram terminal and serve some transportation-related purpose again.

The structure was originally the bulkhead over a staircase leading to the lower level, where trolleys were boarded, Mr. Kroessler said.

Today, the 16-foot-by-16-foot kiosk is a storage shed for its own vestiges. Under an elegant roofline "Entrance" sign and behind a wire screen are stray architectural elements from the facade: a terra-cotta bay with an angular shield topped by a leafy garland, a pilaster decorated with a Greek key motif, brackets wrapped in ornamental scrollwork.

Like the Queensboro Bridge market hall to the east, now shared by a Food Emporium and the restaurant Guastavino's, the interior of the trolley kiosk is distinguished by a vault of self-supporting herringbone-patterned tiles, known as Guastavino tiles for the father and son who designed them.

Engineered by Gustav Lindenthal and designed by Henry Hornbostel, the bridge opened in June 1909. Three months later, trolley service began. Cars once ran from the Manhattan terminal to Astoria, but the line was shortened in 1939 to end at Queens Plaza, with a stop midway across the bridge where an elevator took passengers down to Welfare Island, as Roosevelt Island was then known.

In the last year of operation before being replaced by buses in 1957, the yellow-and-orange trolleys made the 1.6-mile run in 10 minutes. A ride cost 10 cents. Some 125 passengers crowded the 44-passenger car for its last trip.

"It is unlikely," The New York Times said in its valedictory editorial, "that the whooshing whine of the bus will ever be memorialized in song as was the clang of the trolley." As a method of getting to work or play, The Times said, the trolley was "on its own account, a way of having a good time."

Five trolley kiosks were left behind. "We frankly cannot account for three of them," Mr. Cocola said.

The other known survivor was moved in the 1970's to the corner of Brooklyn and St. Marks Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where it serves as the entrance to the Brooklyn Children's Museum.

Because the museum was built underground, the trolley kiosk is its only architectural feature visible from the street.

"Often people say, `Well, the museum is very small,' " said Beth Alberty, the director of collections. The kiosk, she said, will no longer be needed after a renovation and expansion of the museum, to begin this fall. The Transportation Department has already staked its claim.

"We are open to using the parts from the Brooklyn Children's Museum kiosk to repair the one at the bridge, if need be," Mr. Cocola said. "Otherwise, we'll talk to Landmarks and Parks about this one too."

The last surviving car, No. 601, a 1930 Osgood-Bradley Electromobile, was acquired by Everett A. White, founder of the Trolley Museum of New York. It journeyed over the years to Staten Island, to New Jersey and finally to Kingston, N.Y., the museum's current home, where the car is permanently stationed with 28 others.

"Unfortunately, its condition is very, very poor," said Evan Jennings, the vice president of the museum. "However, the car still does exist and hopefully someday, when the funding becomes available, we'll restore it."