This Is What Brooklyn's Transit System Looked Like a Century Ago

Even around 1918, the public-transit system in New York was fairly robust. That much is evident in this yellowing yet instructive map of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit System, a conglomeration of formerly independent street tracks and elevated lines that brought unified, electrified mass transportation to the borough.

This slice of musty cartography, recently featured at the Brooklyn Historical Society, shows the BRT's impressive sprawl right before tragedy struck: In the winter of 1918, a trains traveling in a tunnel under Flatbush took a curve way too fast and flew off the rails, killing 93 passengers. The so-called "Malbone Street Wreck" severely damaged the city's trust in the corporation that operated the BRT, which already had PO'd commuters with what NYC Subway calls a "public be damned" attitude. The following year, it slid into bankruptcy.