Brooklyn, in its earliest days was a city bristling with life and booming with industry.  This was the beginning of the age of Railroads and competing firms began claiming real estate. The Brooklyn & Jamaica Railroad was building a line to Jamaica Queens while the Long Island Railroad worked towards their vision of a route from New York to Boston. To ease congestion on the roadways above, New York’s first “Subway” was built. In 1844 using the cut and cover method, the tunnel was built in only seven months, using only hand tools and primitive (by today's standards) equipment. It was built to provide grade separation for early Long Island Rail Road trains that lacked brakes good enough to operate on city streets, and to eliminate vehicular and pedestrian traffic conflicts and delays. For mainly political reasons, it was closed not too many years after it opened; the last train ran through it in 1859. In 1861, the tunnel was sealed up.