The Centre Street Loop got its start in 1908 with the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company's first Manhattan subway track: the terminal at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The Loop was the first of two BMT Brooklyn Loops designed to connect various Brooklyn Subway lines without requiring new and inefficient terminals in lower Manhattan. Under its original design, the Loop would connect the tracks of Broadway Elevated coming over the Williamsburg (now the BMT Jamaica Line) with Brooklyn Bridge trains originating in Brooklyn. The loop was never completed as planned and was instead incorporated into the BMT Nassau Street Line. These photos document the construction of the tracks that today carry the J and Z trains, and capture glimpses of Manhattan's Civic Center before the completion of the Municipal Building and other prominent structures around Foley Square and City Hall Park.

Timbering below street level for construction of the BRT Centre Street Loop, July 31, 1911. Above street level, the steeple and church facade belong to the Church of St. Andrew at the intersection of Duane Street and City Hall Place. Today, these streets have been de-mapped with the plaza where they once ran part of the judicial complex at the eastern side of the Manhattan’s Civic Center. The church building pictured dates to as early as 1812, and was known as Carroll Hall, a meeting place for the Congregational Society of United Christian Friends denomination, until 1842, when it became the Church of St. Andrew. The church, just a short distance from the offices of the city’s major newspaper became known as the “printers’ church,” after Father Luke J. Evers established a 2:30am mass in 1900, accommodating the late hours of printers at work on morning editions. By the late 1930s — by which point St. Andrews was dwarfed by the adjacent U.S. Courthouse by Cass Gilbert — the structure’s condition had deteriorated, and construction started on a new church on an overlapping site. The original church was razed in 1938. The Centre Street Loop, was an early 20th century project connecting lines running over the Williamsburg and Brooklyn Bridge, thereby providing Manhattan transfer for the various Brooklyn lines terminating at Park Row and reducing the need for trains reversals at bridge terminals. The Center Street Loop connection to Brooklyn Bridge lines was not completed as planned. Instead, the Centre Loop connected to the companion Nassau Street Loop (designed to provide a similar service for Manhattan Bridge trains). Together, the remaining tracks form the BMT Nassau Line (J/Z trains) with extraneous loop tracks presently out of service.