The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Doug Most
fight they could never win. One did not.
* * *
TWEED REFUSED TO GIVE BEACH a penny for his project or to grant him the charter that he needed. In 1868, Tweed was at his most powerful, after the candidates he owned had won city and statewide offices. If he didn’t want something done, it didn’t get done. But Beach was a foe unlike any Tweed had encountered. Beach believed that his pneumatic subway was going to change the city, maybe even the world. That attitude drove him in the same year that he unveiled his subway to donate a large sum of money to open what eventually became the Beach Institute in Savannah, Georgia, a school for freed slaves that was staffed with white teachers from the North. With his school, as with his subway, Beach was determined to build a proud legacy. And nobody, not even the man who ruthlessly reigned over the city, was going to stop him.
Beach knew he couldn’t outmuscle Tweed. And he was far too proud to be bribed and pay Tweed a cut of his subway fares. He would have to outsmart him. In 1869, he applied to the New York State legislature for a charter to build not the giant, people-moving tube he had shown at the fair, but the much smaller one to carry mail. He proposed building an underground mail line near Broadway that would run between Cedar and Warren streets, connect to the main post office at Liberty Street, and provide even faster mail service than the telegraph. Tweed studied Beach’s proposal carefully. The tubes Beach was proposing to build each had a diameter of just four and a half feet, far too small to carry a train car that could hold people. Satisfied that Beach’s idea posed no threat to him, Tweed and the rest of the state lawmakers granted Beach his fifty-year charter to build mail tubes under the city.
But Beach’s deception had only begun. A few weeks later, he sheepishly returned to the state legislature with a minor request. He asked the lawmakers to amend his charter so he could build one large tube for much less money than it would take to build two smaller ones. Tweed, by then, had moved on to other concerns and nobody questioned Beach’s request. It passed.
That tweak gave Beach the proper paperwork he needed to carry out the most daring project New Yorkers had ever seen. He had no intention or desire to speed up mail service in New York. He was going to build a subway in secret. And he would do it almost directly across from City Hall and Boss Tweed’s minions.
* * *
DEVLIN’S CLOTHING STORE WAS A five-story, thriving commercial success. Brothers Daniel and Jeremiah Devlin opened their business in 1843 a few blocks away from City Hall, but when business took off they needed more space for their endless racks of ready-made frocks, suits, umbrellas, underwear, ties, and trousers. One of the reasons the new space near the corner of Warren Street and Broadway worked so well was the gigantic basement, which went two levels deep underground.
Alfred Beach needed just such a space for his own new business, the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company. After scouting for real estate all along Broadway, when he saw the basement of Devlin’s and noticed that it could be accessed from the sidewalk of Warren Street, he negotiated a deal with the brothers. For $4,000 dollars a year, starting on December 1, 1868, he leased their entire basement for a period of five years.
Beach spent the next year focused on the single piece of machinery he would need to dig his tunnel. The device he came up with was ingenious. It resembled a hollowed-out barrel and used a water pump to exert pressure and a sharp digging mechanism that could loosen sixteen inches of soil with each push forward. He also designed a metal hood over the edge of the shield that would protect his workers from falling debris, or in the catastrophic event of a collapse.
But before he could start digging, a different kind of catastrophe nearly derailed Beach’s project in the fall of 1869. A
* * *
TWEED REFUSED TO GIVE BEACH a penny for his project or to grant him the charter that he needed. In 1868, Tweed was at his most powerful, after the candidates he owned had won city and statewide offices. If he didn’t want something done, it didn’t get done. But Beach was a foe unlike any Tweed had encountered. Beach believed that his pneumatic subway was going to change the city, maybe even the world. That attitude drove him in the same year that he unveiled his subway to donate a large sum of money to open what eventually became the Beach Institute in Savannah, Georgia, a school for freed slaves that was staffed with white teachers from the North. With his school, as with his subway, Beach was determined to build a proud legacy. And nobody, not even the man who ruthlessly reigned over the city, was going to stop him.
Beach knew he couldn’t outmuscle Tweed. And he was far too proud to be bribed and pay Tweed a cut of his subway fares. He would have to outsmart him. In 1869, he applied to the New York State legislature for a charter to build not the giant, people-moving tube he had shown at the fair, but the much smaller one to carry mail. He proposed building an underground mail line near Broadway that would run between Cedar and Warren streets, connect to the main post office at Liberty Street, and provide even faster mail service than the telegraph. Tweed studied Beach’s proposal carefully. The tubes Beach was proposing to build each had a diameter of just four and a half feet, far too small to carry a train car that could hold people. Satisfied that Beach’s idea posed no threat to him, Tweed and the rest of the state lawmakers granted Beach his fifty-year charter to build mail tubes under the city.
But Beach’s deception had only begun. A few weeks later, he sheepishly returned to the state legislature with a minor request. He asked the lawmakers to amend his charter so he could build one large tube for much less money than it would take to build two smaller ones. Tweed, by then, had moved on to other concerns and nobody questioned Beach’s request. It passed.
That tweak gave Beach the proper paperwork he needed to carry out the most daring project New Yorkers had ever seen. He had no intention or desire to speed up mail service in New York. He was going to build a subway in secret. And he would do it almost directly across from City Hall and Boss Tweed’s minions.
* * *
DEVLIN’S CLOTHING STORE WAS A five-story, thriving commercial success. Brothers Daniel and Jeremiah Devlin opened their business in 1843 a few blocks away from City Hall, but when business took off they needed more space for their endless racks of ready-made frocks, suits, umbrellas, underwear, ties, and trousers. One of the reasons the new space near the corner of Warren Street and Broadway worked so well was the gigantic basement, which went two levels deep underground.
Alfred Beach needed just such a space for his own new business, the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company. After scouting for real estate all along Broadway, when he saw the basement of Devlin’s and noticed that it could be accessed from the sidewalk of Warren Street, he negotiated a deal with the brothers. For $4,000 dollars a year, starting on December 1, 1868, he leased their entire basement for a period of five years.
Beach spent the next year focused on the single piece of machinery he would need to dig his tunnel. The device he came up with was ingenious. It resembled a hollowed-out barrel and used a water pump to exert pressure and a sharp digging mechanism that could loosen sixteen inches of soil with each push forward. He also designed a metal hood over the edge of the shield that would protect his workers from falling debris, or in the catastrophic event of a collapse.
But before he could start digging, a different kind of catastrophe nearly derailed Beach’s project in the fall of 1869. A
Similar Books
Another Insane Devotion
Peter Trachtenberg
Destiny Calls
Lydia Michaels
Into the Storm
Melanie Moreland
The Lariat (Finding Justus Series)
Ashley Dotson
Max Stone and the Lost Star of Zirdon
Declan Clarke
The Richard Burton Diaries
Richard Burton, Chris Williams
Wilder (An Erotic Fairy Tale)
Scarlet Chill
Buried At Sea
Paul Garrison
Origins
L. J. Smith
Dark Torment
Karen Robards