By John B. Manbeck
a Brooklyn historian
Special to INBrooklyn

Once upon a time, electric street cars ran the streets of Brooklyn. Only we called them “trolley cars� because they had this stick in the back called a troller or a “trolley pole� that connected to a live wire above to make the car go as far as Chicago. (In Europe they were called “trams� and its route a “tramway.�) In Brooklyn, we even went so far as to name a baseball team after the scattered pedestrians called “trolley dodgers.� Before the “subway series,� there was the “streetcar series� in 1944. Then the Dodgers moved out west to trolley-less Los Angeles. (That city had a marvelous rail system until it was exorcized, as seen in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?)

Electric trolleys had evolved from stagecoaches and horse drawn omnibuses, which had developed when Brooklynites discovered suburbs (southern Brooklyn), separating their homes from their place of business. No longer could they walk to work. So Brooklyn created the most diverse mass rail transportation system in America, consisting of surface steam lines, then elevated lines, cable cars on the Brooklyn Bridge, one lone monorail (from New Utrecht to Coney Island) and finally, street cars in the 1890s and subways about 10 years later.

Then, one day, the clean, streamlined PCC trolley cars disappeared to be replaced by fume-spewing omnibuses, although a rare electric bus with twin trolleys ran on Cortelyou Road. So much for history. And suddenly, this century dawned and light rail was upon us, throughout Europe, Asia (where they had double deckers) and the rest of the Americas. But Brooklyn got lost in the dust.

Of course, trolley cars belong to our romantic past. No one thinks of the open cars with dirt and dust flying around, not to mention the manure left behind by the horses. Nevertheless, we can’t help thinking of Judy Garland singing “The Trolley Song� in the movie, Meet Me in St. Louis. Before that, Harold Lloyd starred in Speedy, a comedy about the last horse drawn trolley in Manhattan.

The overhead pole — which kids loved to disconnect to stop the trolley — had been invented in 1880 by Frank Sprague and was first used in Richmond, Virginia. From the 1940s, the trolley faced its certain demise. As an obstruction to automobiles with its fixed path, Brooklyn trolleys also maintained their unique rail lines, refusing to give transfers to other companies’ cars.

An attempt to modernize trolleys in the 1950s came too late, for Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had agreed to convert New York City’s surface mass transportation to buses. Many of the old cars were relegated to trolley museums in Connecticut and elsewhere.

Then in the 1970s, a young transportation engineer, Bob Diamond, came up with restoring trolleys to Downtown Brooklyn. He bought several European trams, storing them in Dumbo when the rent was cheap.

He also rediscovered the pre-Civil War era Atlantic Avenue tunnel, where he hoped to run a trolley line. But the fates were not kind. Local politicians balked so he moved his flock of trolleys to the Red Hook piers and then was removed from the parent organization, the Brooklyn Historic Railroad Association (which owned 16 PCC trolleys) after the NYC Department of Transportation halted work on laying new rails. (The association maintains a 50-page list of Brooklyn trolley lines.)

Now Mayor Mike Bloomberg has resurrected the idea of a Brooklyn trolley run along the waterfront from Red Hook to Brooklyn Bridge Park. While it’s still a contentious issue, it has now become a “green� issue. Perhaps Brooklyn can play the game of “catch up� and bring back the glorious trolley to the streets of Brooklyn. Other cities have created light rail systems in the time we have debated the issue.

With the mayor and B.P. Marty Markowitz behind the idea, this could be the renaissance of the new electoral term. “Bring back the Brooklyn trolley!� I can hear it now.

© 2009 John B. Manbeck

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