Audubon Park Historic District

Audubon Park Historic District Audubon Park: Where Excavations for the New York Subway Began Monday morning, May 14, 1900, Washington few of the waiting laborers. By mid-day, the Heights buzzed with activity. Well before dawn, broad macadam plaza where the Boulevard workmen had begun assembling near Broadway Lafayette broke off from Broadway at 156th and 156th Street, and by “10 o’clock fully 200 Street began filling with a spirited crowd, come men were lying along the green roadway to witness progress. May 14th, 1900 was subway opposite Audubon Park,” representing the day on the Heights and everyone on the Heights nationalities and races that populated the had good cause for jubilation. world’s melting pot, Irishmen, Italians, Australians, South Africans, African-Americans, A Near Miss running the gamut from unskilled laborers to Although a subway route under Broadway to the experienced miners. A few blocks east, at 458 top of the island had been the backbone of rapid 155th Street, shortly after sunrise lawyer John transit plans as early as the Steinway Whalen woke to “a hammering that sounded as Commission’s 1891 proposal, when the Rapid though a hundred men were assailing his home Transit Commission (RTC) delivered contracts to from all sides with hammers.” Grabbing his old New York City Corporation Counsel John Whalen navy revolver and rushing outside to confront in May 1897 – contracts that would not be valid his assailants, he found a group of exuberant without his signature – the citizens of Washington neighbors decorating his house with flags and Heights had reason to worry about the bunting. Once finished, they turned to their Commission’s priorities. Just a few weeks earlier own, not satisfied until all the houses in the Governor Frank Black had signed legislation neighborhood “bloomed into waving color.” An creating the consolidated City of Greater New hour or so later, children in the public school York, an entity that would commence on January fidgeted their way through a half-day of lessons, 1, 1898 combining Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten with Misses Norcott, Walsh, and Holley trying to Island with Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, an maintain order, themselves distracted by last exciting prospect, but one that raised concerns minute preparations for what promised to be an about public projects throughout Manhattan, eventful afternoon. Further south, at particularly in Washington Heights. As the New Amsterdam Avenue and 138th Street, children in York Times reminded its readers in January, 1897: the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band spent the When consolidation has been effected and three morning polishing their instruments in million people look to the Government that will readiness for a march up the hill to 156th Street have its home in or near the New York City Hall where they would play an important part in the for the execution of public works that will afternoon’s exercises. In Audubon Park, by mid promote their comfort or convenience, there morning the cadre of servants in the Grinnell will be urgent demands from Kings, Queens, and Martin households were busy preparing for and Richmond in addition to the modest an early evening reception at the Grinnell villa – requirements of our own people in New York. invited guests only – while Newell Martin and former police inspector Thomas McAvoy, co- Rumors that the RTC intended to run the chairs of a “Committee of Arrangements,” subway tracks only as far as 59th Street, using discussed last minute preparations, then walked the savings for a tunnel to Brooklyn, sent upper up the hill to oversee construction of a Manhattan into a tailspin. By the end of grandstand at 156th Street and Broadway, January, 1897, landowners along the upper west directly in front of the main entrance to the side, following a model established several Park, supplying temporary employment for a decades earlier by the West Side Association, © 2009 Matthew Spady, Webmaster, www.AudubonParkNY.com 1 Audubon Park Historic District incorporated as The Riverside Drive Extension united under the rather ungainly name of the Association of New York City “to promote the “Committee on Public Opinion and Rapid development of that part of the territory Transit Agitation.” included in New York City, which lies north of One Hundred and Twenty-Second Street, south The Committee's trump card was Corporation of One Hundred and Eightieth Street, and west Counsel John Whalen, Washington Heights of the Boulevard and Eleventh Avenue, to cause resident and property holder, a man with the surveys of the territory to be made, to procure official position to prevent the rapid transit streets, roads, avenues, parks, or public places to controversy from dragging on for years – as the be opened and laid out, grades to be established, battle over the Riverside Drive extension to and viaducts, causeways, or bridges to be 158th Street did. Whalen disagreed with the constructed, etc.” The association had five proposal “before the Rapid Transit Commission directors, each with extensive property interests to amend the plans already adopted by providing along the Hudson north of 122nd Street: Robert for an extension to Brooklyn and other parts of J. Hoguet, Francis M. Jencks, Charles V. E. Greater New York,” and opposed “mixing other Intersection of Broadway, 156th Street, and Boulevard Lafayette where Washington Heights citizens celebrated groundbreaking for the New York subway on May 14, 1900. (Image is from 1905, when the subway was running; note the uptown and downtown entrances on Broadway.) Gallup, and representing Audubon Park, Newell tunnels with the original underground road, for Martin (married to the youngest Grinnell sibling which the Rapid Transit Commission practically Laura) and William Milne Grinnell, who also was created.” He stated flatly that “the served as secretary. While the association’s enlargement of the city” had no bearing on name left little doubt that its primary objective Manhattan’s rapid transit plans, which was the extension of Riverside Drive northward Manhattan’s voters had decided by referendum from Grant’s tomb, its strong political before consolidation took place. Whalen had no connections positioned it as a notable addition intention of signing any contracts that would to the “twenty social and political organizations, short-change Washington Heights, where he had representing several thousand citizens” that friends, family, and most importantly, property. © 2009 Matthew Spady, Webmaster, www.AudubonParkNY.com 2 Audubon Park Historic District Corporate Counsel Whalen’s Decoration Day thrown in for good measure. Waiting Game Reporting the coming events a day in advance, all of the New York newspapers pounded home the For eighteen months the unsigned contracts sat significance of the Washington Heights festivities. on Whalen’s desk while he voiced concern for the newly consolidated city’s debt (a level Actual excavation of the rapid transit subway established by the state legislature) and for the will begin to-morrow afternoon. Nominally RTC contracts which he believed should “be there have already been two beginning (sic) of amended to comply with the labor law of 1899,” work on the tunnel. These were when the but his chief reason for dragging his feet was his Mayor some weeks ago formally dug the first conviction that the only way to ensure the spadeful of earth in front of the City Hall, and subway ran into Washington Heights was to when, a few days later William Barclay begin construction at 155th Street and work Parsons, chief engineer of the Commission, north and south from that point simultaneously. wielded the first pick at Greene and Bleecker Whalen set his demands to the RTC high, sts., when James Pilkington started to lower a leaving himself some negotiating room, and sewer that lay in the path of the tunnel route. finally achieved a satisfactory compromise: construction would begin at 155th Street and in But to-morrow the excavation proper of the lower Manhattan and then proceed north from subway will be begun, when L. B. McCabe, who both locations. secured the sub-contracts for constructing As a bonus, actual excavations for the subway Sections 18 and 14. extending from One- tunnel would begin during a Washington hundred and-thirty-third-st. to Hillside-ave. Heights ground-breaking, and not at the official will start digging at One-hundred-and-fifty- City Hall ceremony. Leaving no wiggle room for sixth-st. and Broadway. the RTC, the only contracts Whalen executed before the Washington Heights groundbreaking, Subway Day on the Heights were those “obtained by L. B. McCabe of As morning wore into a brilliant and Baltimore, for the construction of the two unseasonably hot afternoon, the citizenry of sections” of the subway extending north from Washington Heights began arriving from “Fort 133rd Street. Laughing off rumors that “the George, Spuyten Duyvil, Inwood, Marble Hill, delay was due to some hitch in the bonding of Dyckman’s Meadows, Carmansville and other the sub-contractors,” the chief contractor for points [in] hundreds of conveyances” – their subway construction John B. McDonald (who horse-drawn vehicles contrasting sharply with was also Whalen’s cousin) bluntly stated that the electrified subway they were coming to “the construction company had purposely inaugurate. Revelers had multiple choices. delayed the beginning of work on the lower Anyone standing on the Gothic bridge that sections in order that the first start might be spanned Broadway and connected the two sides upon the northern section of the route,” at 156th of the Trinity Cemetery could watch carriages Street directly in front of Audubon Park. coming up the hill from the south and then turn around to see the grandstand one block north. So on the morning of May 14, 1900, six weeks Picnickers spread blankets on the grassy plot in after the official ceremony in front of City Hall – the eastern side of Trinity Cemetery near the a grand affair celebrating the consolidated city of seven-year-old Audubon monument, a spot the Greater New York and the technological feat that Church of the Intercession would occupy more would bind its residents by underground railway than a decade later.

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