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Page 4
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Subway Expansion
Presents Opportunity
The signing of the Dual Contracts for new
rapid transit construction in 1913 presented the BRT with the
opportunity to rationalize and upgrade all its Coney Island
services. The contracts, signed between the BRT, the rival
Interborough Rapid Transit Corporation, and the City of New
York, provided for the building or upgrading of hundreds of
miles of subway and elevated lines in four of the City's five
boroughs. The cost was split between the City and the private
companies.
Under the Dual Contracts, the BRT would
take the West End and Culver Lines off the street and place
them on elevated structures. In Coney Island proper, it would
raise the southern end of the Brighton Line off the ground and
place it on a massive four-to-six track elevated structure to
run from Brighton Beach to West End Terminal, picking up the
Culver
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The New Train Shed as it will appear from Stillwell Avenue, looking
north. Watercolor by Vladislav
Yeliseyev, provided courtesy of Kiss + Cathcart Architects and
Jacobs Engineering Group.
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Line at W. 8th Street on an unusual double-decker elevated.
West End Terminal would now host all the
subway lines that evolved from the steam roads.
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To accomplish this the old terminal was demolished and a massive new terminal was constructed, with eight tracks and four platforms, multiple fare payment areas, stairs and ramps, to host the hundreds of thousands (and, it is said, the occasional million) who would descend on Coney Island on a sunny summer day.
New West End Terminal
The new terminal, initially referred to in company papers as New West End Terminal, soon became known as Stillwell Avenue Terminal. It opened formally on May 29, 1919, one day before Brighton trains began using the terminal, but West End passenger trains began using the unfinished terminal earlier, on December 23, 1918. Sea Beach trains apparently were present on the formal opening date, but Culver trains did not join their brothers until May 1, 1920.
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©2003 The Composing Stack Inc.
©2003 Paul Matus
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Updated May 1, 2003
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