Atlantic Avenue
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About the Author
Russell Granger is the founder and CEO of Arch Digitals, a branding and marketing agency specializing in strategy and design for engaging customers online. He began focusing his research and archiving efforts on antebellum Brooklyn when family history pursuits led to the discovery of an association with Walt Whitman. Russell currently lives in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, just a few streets from several ancestral addresses from the 1830s.
Flatbush at Atlantic
View south on Flatbush where Atlantic crosses, 1845. Period tinting.
A Long Island Rail Road train makes its approach from the east toward the Bull’s Head Tavern, made famous by its role in the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn as Baker’s Tavern.
The Brooklyn and Jamaica Rail Road was chartered in 1832, and was opened from the South Ferry to Jamaica, a distance of about twelve miles in 1836; not long after the Long Island Rail Road, chartered April 26, 1834, ran cars over the same track, reaching some of the towns in Suffolk county. The route was along Atlantic Street, now Atlantic avenue.
South Ferry
The Ferry at Brooklyn, New York, by G.K. Richardson, 1838. Period tinting.
The South Ferry Company was established on May 16, 1836 to connect Lower Manhattan to the Long Island Rail Road, newly-opened to Jamaica one month prior. Four years later, the Fulton Ferry Company, which then operated only the Fulton Ferry, merged with the South Ferry Company to form the New York and Brooklyn Union Ferry Company.