"A
hurricane of frightful power”
If you were a businessman in
Manhattan in the 1860s and 1870s, you wanted William ‘Boss’ Tweed as a friend.
He ran the Democratic Party’s political machine. It controlled the city. What’s
more, Tweed was the Big Apple’s third-biggest landholder. Nothing happened
without Tweed’s permission—at least until 1877 when he went to prison for
stealing tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers.
Even back in those days, traffic was
terrible in New York City, especially Manhattan. Alfred
Ely Beach had a dream—a subterranean dream—and he defied Tweed. Beach wanted to
build a subway. Tweed didn't.
Beach was no eccentric. He knew how
to make an underground train system work. He had the scientific, legal, and business
savvy, and the money to make it happen. What he didn’t have was Tweed in his
back pocket.
Born into a wealthy New York City family,
Beach had in 1849 proposed the construction of an underground horse-powered
tram system. That idea went nowhere. Around the same time, he designed and
patented a typewriter for the blind. It embossed letters on paper. That notion
fizzled, too.
He then became publisher of The New York Sun newspaper. It was the
city’s first daily paper that cost only a penny. It was also the first paper to
publish lurid crime stories. The result? A huge success.
Then a new publication called Scientific American came to his
attention. Oddly, though, it published poetry and essays. Beach had big plans
for it. As its co-owner, he turned into a publication about scientific progress.
Experts on the history of American
patents think Beach’s vision for the magazine caused such excitement in the
scientific community that it was at least partly responsible for the vast jump
in the number of patent applications during the mid-1800s—from 600 in 1846 to
20,000 in 1886.
Ambitions
ran low
But
Beach’s ambitions ran low, much lower than patents and papers. His underground
urgings led him to found the Beach Pneumatic Power Company. In 1867 his
Scientific American proclaimed: “It is probable that a pneumatic railway of
considerable length for regular traffic will soon be laid down near New-York,
under the auspices of the Pneumatic Dispatch Company of New Jersey, of which
Mr. Beach has lately been elected President.”
Instead of being powered by ponies,
his subway would run on air-power. A giant fan would propel underground
carriages. It would push them with air, or when the fan's direction was
reversed, it would suck them onward.
Beach's problem was political, not
technological. He went before New York City’s government and proposed the
following: He would build not a "railway of considerable length" but
a test line consisting of one stop with one car. It would run 312-feet
underneath Broadway connecting Murray Street and Warren Street. (This is near
the Wall Street area in the southern tip of Manhattan.)
Unfortunately, local—and
powerful—landowners felt threatened by digging near or under their properties. The
millionaire John Jacob Astor came out against the project. He was one of the
city's biggest landlords. Alexander T. Stewart wanted no mechanical moles
burrowing anywhere near his buildings, threatening their stability. He owned
the Marble Palace (otherwise known by its lower Manhattan address '280
Broadway). It was the city's first department store and had a well-heeled
clientele. And, unfortunately for Beach, the swank store stood on Broadway one
block north of Warren Street.
What’s more, there were also
discussions in New York City about building an ‘el’ system, a network of 'el'-evated
trains. Property owners preferred that plan. And “Boss” Tweed liked it, too. He
especially fancied the thought of the millions of dollars he would
surreptitiously make in bribes from its construction.
In the end, Beach could only get the
city fathers to approve tunneling to build much smaller postal tubes. A system
of shooting air-powered underground mail had already proven successful in
London.
He wasn’t going to give up on his
dream. "I won't pay political blackmail," Beach told his brother, who
was the co-publisher of The Sun. "I say, let's build this subway
furtively."
After getting his permit, Beach quietly
went back to the city. He had the permit amended so he could dig a tunnel with
a greater diameter. No one noticed, and Beach had his day in the sun—or in the
dark, as the case may be.
His men dug secretly in the day
using a hydraulic tunneling bore. To help keep the project hush-hush, the
resulting great heaps of dirt were brought to the surface and hauled away by
teams of horse-drawn wagons only at night. Beach went to such lengths that the
wagons had muffled wheels.
When the mayor wanted to visit this
stygian construction site, Beach refused to let him descend. After all, Beach
was footing the bill. It's estimated he sunk somewhere between $70,000 and
$350,000 of his own funds into the project ($1.2 million to $6.1 million in
today's money).
In February 1870 Beach opened his
subway to wonderful acclaim. First, passengers entered through air-tight doors
in Devlin's, a men's clothing store. Then they descended into a 112-foot-long
waiting room. The New York Times
reported that instead of a “dismal, cavernous retreat,” travelers found a
“light, airy tunnel” complete with an “elegant reception room.”
Here passengers waited in style amid
Greek-style statues. Gas lamps burning in chandeliers kept the hall brightly
lit. Those waiting enjoyed gazing at frescoes and at goldfish swimming in a fountain.
There was even a baby grand piano.
Adjacent to the hall was the Great
Aeolor. This steam-powered air pump got its name from Aeolus, the god the
ancient Greeks believed controlled the winds. But most people called the grand gizmo
The Western Tornado.
Its
enormous throat
Wrote one passenger: "As we
went in, we felt a gentle breeze; but after we arrived at the mouth of the
great blower, and while we were gazing in wonder at the motions of the gigantic
blowing-wings, the engineer put on more steam and increased the speed, so that
the blast instantly became a hurricane of frightful power.
"Hats, bonnets, shawls,
handkerchiefs, and every loose thing, were snatched away from our hands and
swept into the tunnel; while all of us, unable to stand against the tornado,
hastily retreated from the machine to a corner of the air-box, where we were
slightly sheltered. At this juncture the speed of the Aeolor was reduced, the
storm was over, and only a gentle summer’s breeze issued from its enormous
throat.”
The train did indeed have one car
which held 22 passengers. It ran 312 feet in a tunnel that was nine feet in
diameter. It went 10 miles per hour. The fare was 25 cents. All proceeds
benefited a home for orphaned children of men who fought for the Union Army in
the Civil war.
The Times raved that Beach's conveyance was "the most novel, if
not the most successful, enterprise that New York has seen in many a day.” The
public agreed. Beach sold 400,000 tickets.
He wanted to dramatically extend his
subway. "We propose to operate a subway all the way to Central Park, about
five miles in all," said Beach. "When it's finished we should be able
to carry 20,000 passengers a day at speeds up to a mile a minute."
That, however, was not to be. Tweed
was furious and shut him down after a year. Nonetheless, Beach fought back. Bills
supporting an expanded subway line passed in the state legislature in 1871 and
1872, but the governor, who was conveniently in Tweed's employ, vetoed them,
saying the project lacked adequate state and city supervision.
Finally, in 1873 when it looked like
Beach would get political approval and financial backing, the U.S. fell into a
severe depression, and his financial backers had to withdraw their proposed
funding.
For a time, Beach rented out his
underground world as a rifle range and then as a wine cellar. Ultimately, those
ventures failed, and when Devlin's burned to the ground, the entrances to the
subway were sealed and not opened again until 1912 when the city built the BMT
subway line. His subway car was donated to Cornell. Its whereabouts are now unknown.
MORAL:
Get down if you want
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