Today, Fulton Mall is a bustling shopping district in Downtown Brooklyn. During the late-Victorian / early-Edwardian eras (think 1880-1910), it was the preeminent thoroughfare for fashionable shopping in Brooklyn. With monumental department stores like Abraham & Straus and impeccable restaurants like Gage & Tollner, shoppers and window shoppers alike teamed Fulton Street to see everything from the latest wedding trousseau to mourning veils, and penny candy to soft clam bellies in Duxbury stew. While most of these businesses no longer exist, many of their architectural remains can be found behind and above their modern facades.

In the opening decades of the 20th Century, the proliferation of new subway lines in Brooklyn changed the shape of Brooklyn's busiest intersections; new routes were excavated and transit hubs born, replacing the streetcars and elevated railways of years past. This collection includes a selection of photographs documenting subway construction in and around Times Plaza, Flatbush Avenue, and Ashland Place.

View west on Fulton Street, beneath the Fulton Street El, during construction of the IRT Eastern Parkway Line (2/3), April 30, 1908.

Subway construction beneath elevated trains on Fulton Street (left) and Flatbush Avenue (right), September 10, 1907. This photo captures the past and present of Brooklyn public transit: the Fulton and Fifth Avenue elevated trains (the latter over Flatbush Avenue); streetcars running on both streets; and reinforcements in place to brace the elevated trestles for excavation associated with the IRT Eastern Parkway line, beneath Flatbush.