A Century of Subways

A Century of Subways .......................... 10358$ $$FM 09-03-03 15:34:33 PS .......................... 10358$ $$FM 09-03-03 15:34:33 PS ACenturyofSubways Celebrating 100 Years of New York’s Underground Railways BRIAN J. CUDAHY Fordham University Press New York 2003 .......................... 10358$ $$FM 09-03-03 15:34:34 PS Copyright ᭧ 2003 by Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cudahy, Brian J. A century of subways : celebrating 100 years of New York’s underground railways / by Brian J. Cudahy. p. cm. ISBN 0-8232-2292-6 (hard cover : alk. paper) 1. Subways—New York (State)—New York—History 2. Railroads—New York (State)—New York—History. 3. Interborough Rapid Transit Company—History. I. Title. TF847.N5C73 2003 388.4Ј28Ј097471—dc22 2003017034 Printed in the United States of America 070605040354321 First edition .......................... 10358$ $$FM 09-03-03 15:34:34 PS CONTENTS Introduction vii Stonehenge via Subway xi 1. August Belmont and His Subway 1 2. Change at Park Street Under 72 3. The World’s First Subway 123 4. New York’s Electrified Railroads 182 5. The Legacy of the IRT 276 Appendix 305 Notes 321 Bibliography 367 Index 373 .......................... 10358$ CNTS 09-03-03 15:34:38 PS .......................... 10358$ CNTS 09-03-03 15:34:38 PS INTRODUCTION A Century of Subways: Celebrating 100 Years of New York’s Un- derground Railways has been written to help celebrate the centenary of the New York Subway. A hundred years ago, on the afternoon of Thursday, October 27, 1904, New Yorkers walked into various entrance kiosks of the city’s new Interborough Rapid Transit Company, headed down a flight or two of stairs, and took their very first rides under the sidewalks of New York aboard a fleet of new, electric-powered, rapid-transit trains. The subway line that opened for business on October 27, 1904, was 9 miles from one end to the other and included twenty-seven separate stations. On October 27, 2004, when the New York Sub- way celebrates its centenary, the system will encompass 247 miles, and passengers will be able to board trains at 468 different stations. Mere growth, however it is measured, is not the principal accomplishment that characterizes the first hundred years of subway service in New York. More so than in any other city on the face of the earth, during its first century of service the subway has woven its way into the fabric of this exciting metropolis to the extent that one simply may not imagine New York, with all of its vitality and all of its dynamism, without the all-important mobility that is provided to the city’s denizens day after day by electric-powered subway trains speeding passengers uptown and downtown through a network of underground tunnels. A Century of Subways is not a single narrative story. Rather, in an effort to present a sense of the context within which New York’s mass-transit achievement in 1904 should be appreciated and un- derstood, it is a collection of five separate and different stories. The book’s opening chapter, ‘‘August Belmont and His Sub- way,’’ talks about the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, its president, August Belmont, Jr., and the construction of the city’s first subway in 1904. It also traces the development of that initial subway into the IRT Division of today’s much larger and more comprehensive subway system. As a matter of usage, I have re- .......................... 10358$ INTR 09-03-03 15:34:43 PS viii INTRODUCTION stricted the popular term ‘‘IRT’’ to the post-1940 period, when the Interborough Rapid Transit Company became the IRT Divi- sion of the Board of Transportation of the City of New York. I recognize that ‘‘IRT’’ was used in New York prior to 1940, but I trust my distinction is helpful. (I have also restricted the term ‘‘City of New York’’ to the municipal entity that came into exis- tence, through amalgamation, on January 1, 1898, while its less extensive predecessor is referred to as ‘‘New York City.’’) Chapter 2 tells the story of the only American subway that predated New York’s, a wonderfully diverse system whose initial element opened in 1897 in Boston. (Major elements of this chapter initially appeared in my 1972 book, Change at Park Street Under.) Boston and New York enjoy a wonderfully rich relation- ship that incorporates such diverse elements as the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, Babe Ruth and Bill Buckner, the old Fall River Line, Fordham versus Boston College, Central Park and the Public Garden. Chapter 2 advances the proposition that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and the IRT are also part of this shared heritage. Even Boston’s accomplishment of 1897 was not the world’s first subway system. Chapter 3 tells of an underground railway in London, England—powered initially by soot-spewing steam loco- motives—that began hauling Queen Victoria’s subjects a full three decades earlier in the year 1863, and how it grew and developed into what came to be called the London Underground in subse- quent decades. To provide further context for the centenary of the New York Subway, this chapter also presents a broad-gauge look, in both words and pictures, at the general estate of subway systems in Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Chapter 4 allows the development of the Interborough Subway to be seen in yet another perspective by examining a parallel style of electrified railway in New York—short-haul service into nearby suburban territory operated by railroad companies whose principal markets are intercity in nature. Neither of the two major intercity railroad companies that inaugurated such service in New York in the early years of the twentieth century—the Penn- sylvania Railroad and the New York Central—remain in business in the twenty-first century. But their traditions certainly live on in such public agencies as the Metropolitan Transportation Au- .......................... 10358$ INTR 09-03-03 15:34:43 PS INTRODUCTION ix thority and New Jersey Transit. Two other important railroads whose electric operations into the New York suburbs have also passed into the hands of public agencies are the Long Island and the New York, New Haven and Hartford. Furthermore, in surviv- ing such a shift from the private sector of risk and reward to the public sector of subsidy and service, the commuter railroads of New York have followed the same path that was earlier pioneered when the privately owned Interborough Rapid Transit Company of 1904 evolved into a public entity on the eve of America’s entry into the Second World War. (As a further matter of usage, in the pages that follow the abbreviation NYC will refer exclu- sively to the New York Central Railroad, never New York City.) The fifth and final chapter in this centenary tribute to the New York Subway sketches out the general development of rail rapid transit throughout North America during the hundred-year inter- val that began in the plaza outside City Hall in downtown Man- hattan on a quiet October afternoon in 1904. It has been, certainly, a quiet revolution and one that has been remarked upon but rarely. But the fact remains that during the final quarter of the twentieth century, urban rail transit saw explosive growth from one end of North America to the other, in cities as different as Baltimore and Buffalo, San Juan and San Francisco, Montreal and Los Angeles. The legacy of the IRT that began on October 27, 1904, is both substantial and profound. It is also extraordinarily beneficial to the health of urban America. Best of all, though, as the world enters the twenty-first century, it is a legacy whose full dimen- sions have yet to be revealed. Burke, Virginia July, 2003 .......................... 10358$ INTR 09-03-03 15:34:43 PS .......................... 10358$ INTR 09-03-03 15:34:43 PS STONEHENGE VIA SUBWAY A few summers ago, my wife Mary Lou and I were driving west to east across southern Britain. We were traveling from the Welsh port city of Swansea after a delightful ferry crossing from Cork, Ireland, and our destination was Southampton, England, where we would board the cruise ship Royal Princess for a two-week voyage back to New York. After pausing for lunch that day in the city of Bath, mid-afternoon found us driving down a two-lane country road in Wiltshire for a visit to Stonehenge. As we approached the historic site, the famous circle of haunting stone loomed large in an open field off to our right; a parking lot was on the left. We pulled in, locked the car, and tried to get our bearings. And that’s when we saw the sign. Accurate, brief, and helpful, it read in its entirety: ‘‘Stonehenge, Via Subway.’’ The ‘‘subway’’ that one uses to reach the ancient wonders of Stonehenge operates neither local nor express service; it has no third rail, no high-level platforms, no multicolor route maps. It is, of course, a simple pedestrian underpass that tourists in the parking lot may use to cross the two-lane road without having to worry about the perils of traffic (British traffic, I might add, which operates on the ‘‘wrong’’ side of the road).

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