Notes on "Agreement with Flatbush Railroad Company", 1870

Transcribed from the physical document at Othmer Library, Brooklyn, 2025-11-22, after requesting a viewing based on this entry I found in Brooklyn's Library digital collection that lacked an image or transcript.

We and each of us jointly and severally hereby agree by and with Martin Kalbfleisch Mayor of the City of Brooklyn and Robert Jerry Street Commissioner of said City that we will carve the track of the Grand Street Prospect Park and Flatbush Railroad Company where the same has been laid above the grade line of the Streets through which the route of said Railroad runs to be reduced to the original grade of said Streets, and where the track of said Railroad is to be hereafter laid that the same shall be laid in conformity to the grade of the Streets through which the route of said Railroad runs and will carve the pavement of said Streets to be so laid on the outer side of the tracks of said Company that the same shall not in any way interfere with or obstruct public travel.

Dated Brooklyn Nov 26 / 70

Approved Nov. 26 1870 Martin Kalbfleish

Little(?) Wood Charles Cooper(?)

This was such a fun exercise! I didn't know what to expect in the contents. But the agreement's timing and content aligns with the historical timeline I'm learning about in Supplanting America's Railroads: The Early Auto Age 1900–1940. The first chapter discusses how 1870 is precisely when the tides of public hostility to the nascent "robber baron" train monopolies began reaching a fever pitch, with governments finally starting to question the status quo:

Beginning in the 1870s, public hostility toward the railroads grew rapidly. State governments as well as the federal government assumed a very different stance toward the railroads. Instead of offering incentives to lay track and assuming rather laissez-faire stances regarding railroad operations as before, those governments brought degrees of direct regulation to the fore.

In this light, the agreement above reads possibly as the City of Brooklyn's early major pushback against the urban rail network woven into the rapidly urbanizing city, which apparently at the time did not run at-grade down major thoroughfares like Flatbush Avenue!

This might be some very helpful policy and public sentiment data for the History of Trams in NYC, and is I think part of the story of why the city turned so readily to the automobile-first transportation policy framework that has dominated the 5 boroughs since the 1950s.