BMT Lexington Avenue Line
Brooklyn New York elevated railway (closed 1950)
The BMT Lexington Avenue Line (also called the Lexington Avenue Elevated) was the first standard elevated railway in Brooklyn, New York, operated in its later days by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, and then the City of New York.
The original line, as it existed at the end of 1885, traveled from Fulton Ferry in Downtown Brooklyn east to East New York, passing over York Street, turning right onto Hudson Avenue (which is now a pedestrian walkway within the Farrugut Houses), left onto Park Avenue, right onto Grand Avenue, left onto Lexington Avenue, right onto Broadway, and slight left onto Fulton Street.
The structure above Broadway and Fulton Street is now part of the BMT Jamaica Line. The original structure east of Alabama Avenue in East New York still exists, although it has been rebuilt to support subway cars, which are heavier than the former elevated cars. The remaining elevated structure is the oldest such structure in the subway system.
History
The Brooklyn Elevated Railroad opened the line to passengers at 16:00 on May 13, 1885, with a five-cent fare for trains every five minutes. The original line ran from York and Washington Streets (near the Brooklyn Bridge) along York Street, Hudson Avenue, Park Avenue, Grand Avenue, Lexington Avenue, and Broadway to Gates Avenue. The three stations on Park Avenue had island platforms, while all the other stations had two side platforms.
The first extension, east to Manhattan Beach Crossing in East New York, named for the crossing of the Manhattan Beach Division of the Long Island Rail Road, opened at 09:00 on June 14, 1885. Arrangements were made with the LIRR for joint tickets to Manhattan Beach, as well as with the Grand Street, Prospect Park and Flatbush Railroad (Franklin Avenue Line of streetcars) and Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway (Brighton Beach Line) to Brighton Beach.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “BMT Lexington Avenue Line” is brooklyn New York elevated railway (closed 1950). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lexington, Avenue and Line, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4836006. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1885.
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This entry incorporates text from “BMT Lexington Avenue Line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.