Annual report of the trustees Author:Museum of the City of New York Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TRANSIT During the year the Club has given especial attention to a number of matters connected with the transit problem. The most important work was the leadi... more »ng of the opposition to the construction of an elevated railroad through the centre of Delancey Street, for the purpose of connecting the Williams- burg Bridge with the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side. Had the plan just alluded to been adopted, it would have meant the construction of a new line of elevated railroad through the heart of the most congested section in the world, and would have inflicted upon the tenement house population on the East Side of Manhattan an irreparable injury, increasing the prevalence of tuberculosis and making life intolerable for thousands of people. AN ELEVATED RAILROAD ON DELANCEY STREET PREVENTED This plan in one form or another had been put forward by the officials of the Bridge Department for several years past, and numerous efforts had been made to carry it out. It was presented now as a means of relieving the congestion and crowding at the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge, its advocates claiming that if trains could come over the Williamsburg Bridge and proceed in a continuous journey across the Brooklyn Bridge and back again over the Williamsburg Bridge, this problem would be solved. At the time when the Club began its fight, the prospects of defeating the scheme seemed almost hopeless. Behind the plan was the practically unanimous public sentiment of the Borough of Brooklyn; the Brooklyn newspapers demanded its adoption, and nearly all the civic organizations and property owners' associations in Brooklyn were in favor of it; moreover, a Brooklyn citizens' committee, known as the Committee of Twenty-five, had been formed to carry it through, with Sl.number of Brookly...« less