50

throughout the length and breadth of the land and find a man standing on his hands singing. It just ain't done anymore."

The Solitary Singer by Gay Wilson Allen. - Macmillan 1955

page 170 Letter by Moncure P Conway to Emerson Sep 17, 1855

"I found by the directory that one Walter Whitman lived fearfully far (out of Brooklyn, nearly) on Ryerton [Ryerson] Street a short way from Myrtle Avenue. The way to reach the house is to go down to Fulton Street Ferry [in New York], after crossing take the Fulton and Myrtle Avenue car, and get out at Ryerton Street. It is one of a row of small wooden houses with porches, which all seem occupied by mechanics. I didn't find him there, however.

Brooklyn Guardians by William Fales

Brooklyn 1887

(Brooklyn Public Library)

p 174

The Patrol Wagon

"In November, 1886 the Police Commissioner, put the first police patrol wagon into commission, and stabled it in Union Alley,

51

near Myrtle Avenue. The system, though new to Brooklyn, had been tried with great success in both Philadelphia and Chicago. The wagon had not been in commission two hours before it received a telephone call from the First Precinct, to hurry to the corner of Gold and Myrtle Avenue. The distance, over five blocks, was covered in less than three minutes. On the corner lay a man beastly intoxicated. The system used to get the unconscious man into the wagon, was applied on this occasion. In the first place, the officer in the wagon [illegible] his fingers into the prisoner's collar and lifts him into the wagon, where he is laid at full length on the floor. This manoeuvre does not take more than a minute, and before the tail-board is again placed in position the wagon starts for the station-house while the clang, clang of the big gong, manipulated by the driver's foot, warns the pedestrians and vehicles ahead to move out of the way."

52

[Image of these pages not available due to copyright restrictions]

Brooklyn's Eastern District by Armbruster

Completed in 1928 published in 1941 - no title page

(Brooklyn Public Library) page 30-31 R974.72 A72 Bv

"Street Lamps"

About 1850 the street lamps consisted of large square glass frames and wooden posts, whale oil lamps were inside the glass frames. The lamps were not lighted on moonlight nights.

The lighting of the oil lamps involved the use of a ladder, a vessel of spirits of turpentine, a lantern and a torch. If by the severity of the weather the torch was extinguished, the relighting of it was no easy matter. After the friction - matches, called loco-foco matches, were known, it was easier to relight a torch in bad weather.

In the morning the ladder was again required, the lamps has to be refilled and the wicks had to be trimmed.

By his contract the lamplighter was not compelled to light the lamps on moonlight nights, and he went by his calendar and not by the accident of an obscured day."

53

New York Times. Sunday July 20. 1969

[New York Times Article, 80-Year-Old Myrtle Avenue El To Run for Last Time in October, with map of Myrtle Avenue El Line; p. 1, col. 6]

[Article describes the history of the Myrtle Avenue Line and plans for its demolition]