On This Day in History, April 3: Moving Day for Brighton Beach Hotel
BROOKLYN — Manhattan shouldn’t boast too much about the theater buildings they moved around in the redevelopment of 42nd Street in recent years. Brooklyn could move whole hotels in the late 1880s.
April 3, 1888, was moving day for the Hotel Brighton a.k.a. the Brighton Beach Hotel. The beach was eroding and waves were lapping at the doors of the hotel. Something had to be done as the building was in danger of being swept out to sea. Its owner decided to save his hotel. He contracted the Brooklyn & Brighton Beach Rail Road Company to lay 24 tracks under the 174-room, 3-story hotel and load it on 112 cars for movement 600 feet further inland.
The April 4th World described the amazing feat: