The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway (24 page)

There was no question that Worthen’s plan was the simpler of the two, which is why three of the four consulting engineers the Steinway commission hired to review the plans and make recommendations preferred it to Parsons’s plan. But the lone holdout was not just anyone. It was Octave Chanute, the outspoken French-born president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Chanute’s preference for the Parsons plan, with his own modifications, created a headache for the Steinway commissioners. Now, instead of having two plans to choose from, they had three.

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, the
Times’
headline said the next day. The story singled out Chanute for holding up the process. “It is undoubtedly this report which has caused hesitation and delay in coming to a definite conclusion on the general question of construction. With only the other reports before them they could probably have reached a decision on this; but Mr. Chanute’s report has given them so much to think about that they have declared that no decision will be given out for several days.”

*   *   *

THREE WEEKS LATER, THE
Steinway commission announced its decision. Two separate routes would branch off one main line. The main line would start at South Ferry and head up the west side beneath Broadway to the Bronx. The second line would commence off the main line at Union Square and go up the east side under Madison Avenue and also cross the Harlem River into the Bronx. The tunnel would be built with a shield designed especially for the project, but the depth of the tunnels would be decided by the contractor. The trains would most likely be powered by electricity, though the commissioners remained skeptical about that. On the express lines, it was estimated the trains could reach forty miles per hour, a speed that seemed supersonic for a city that had been riding on plodding horses or congested Els for half a century.

*   *   *

ON JANUARY 1, 1892,
a fifteen-year-old Irish girl with rosy cheeks and fair skin named Annie Moore was the first of 148 passengers to be escorted off the steamship
Nevada
. She and the others were placed onto a small transfer boat that was colorfully decorated in bunting, and when it docked a few minutes later Annie was hustled into a new building for arriving immigrants in New York harbor. Foghorns and whistles clanged to signal her arrival, and, after a brief stumble, she walked up to a registry desk, where she was registered as the first arriving immigrant at Ellis Island. She was handed a ten-dollar gold coin, the most amount of money she said that she had ever held, and then she explained to the throng of witnesses, workers, and reporters that she was here in America with her two younger brothers to join their parents on Monroe Street in New York City.

If there was a moment that signaled how desperately New York needed a subway, the arrival of Annie Moore was it. In 1877, sixty-three thousand immigrants arrived in New York City, passing through what was then the arriving station for immigrants, Castle Garden. When the Bureau of Immigration was put in charge of registering immigrants in 1890, it was clear that Castle Island could no longer handle the arriving flood of immigrants. A new station was needed to screen for fleeing criminals or merely the sick and the homeless, and the immigration bureau quickly settled on the empty landfill Ellis Island, which opened for business New Year’s Day in 1892. In its first year, Ellis Island registered 445,987 immigrants, more Germans and Irish than any other group and more than seven times the total that had arrived fifteen years earlier. It was all the evidence needed to prove that New York City had to do more than merely expand its livable space to accommodate its surging population. It had to create a better way for all those new people flooding into the metropolis to get around.

*   *   *

IT TOOK MORE THAN A YEAR
for the Steinway commission to write up a detailed contract outlining how the subway would be built, who would operate it, and how the fare money would be disbursed. Only then could the date be set to auction off a 999-year contract to build and operate a New York City subway: December 29, 1892.

A financial meltdown overseas in London back in 1890 triggered by the collapse of the city’s oldest merchant bank, Baring Brothers & Co., had begun to cause financiers around the world to hold on to their cash a little tighter. This would have far-reaching implications. And when the king of New York’s elevated trains, Jay Gould, died suddenly on December 2, 1892, it threw the city’s transit future into greater turmoil. A few days later, when Steinway was cornered by a reporter at a transit commission meeting, he acknowledged that times had changed in the two years since the subway talks began in earnest. There was even a new yet familiar president of the United States. Once again, with the backing of his old friend William Whitney, Grover Cleveland had taken the White House in the 1892 election, winning revenge against the incumbent president, Benjamin Harrison, who ousted him from office back in 1888. The Democrats were again in power, though this time, unlike Cleveland’s first term, the country was on much shakier financial ground, and a collapse seemed all but imminent. Despite so much upheaval, Steinway insisted he was not worried about the subway contract.

“I haven’t the slightest doubt that capitalists would have eagerly sought the opportunity now presented to them in the rapid transit scheme for New York had it not been for the unfortunate failure of the Baring Brothers of London,” Steinway said to a
Times
reporter in mid-December. “That financial disaster made capital everywhere very sensitive and overcareful in undertakings involving large sums of money. But evidence is not wanting that the financial market is recovering and that the undertaking we have on hand will be carried through successfully. I am confident that we shall get a bid for the franchise on the 29th of this month and that work will be inaugurated early next year.”

If no bids were received, Steinway said the commission would simply wait a few months and offer it again. And if still no bids were made, the city would then be wise to consider the idea put forth by Abram Hewitt: build the subway and lease it out to the highest bidder. It would take a few years to bring the city a return on its investment, he said, but passengers would flock to the subway, and revenues would eventually soar. “When this is accomplished,” he told
The Times,
“merchants and their clerks, who now stand and sit about downtown restaurants for their lunches, will jump aboard these cars and get home in five, ten and fifteen minutes for luncheon with their families. They could do this for ten cents and inside an hour, which will be far more economical to themselves and add to the dividends of the road.”

They were confident words. But what he said publicly did not match how he felt privately. Steinway was nervous. On Christmas Eve, he stayed home with his wife, who had been suffering migraines, and his daughter Maud. He tipped his younger, hardest-working servants one hundred dollars apiece and his older servants and private coachman twenty-five dollars each and let them go for the evening to be with their families. And at eleven o’clock, the piano king and president of the Steinway commission climbed into bed, closed his eyes, and drifted off, dreaming that burglars were sneaking into his house. In fact, a nightmare far worse was imminent.

*   *   *

THE SOARING ROTUNDA INSIDE THE
New York City Hall building is a stunning piece of architecture. A wide marble staircase twists on opposing sides up to the second floor, and light pours in from first- and second-floor arched windows and bounces off the gleaming white marble floor. When Abraham Lincoln visited New York in 1861 as president-elect, he spoke from the rotunda, and when he was assassinated four years later, his coffin was placed on the landing eight stairs up, where he lay in state. Ulysses S. Grant lay in state in the rotunda as well, as did the first Union officer killed during the Civil War, Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth, who had been a friend of Lincoln’s and whose death sparked a Union rallying cry, “Remember Ellsworth!” In the late nineteenth century, whenever there was a major celebration or announcement or a day of mourning with state and national implications, only the White House carried greater importance than the rotunda of New York City Hall. On December 29, 1892, the awarding of a contract to build what would be the first subway in America was such an occasion deserving of the rotunda.

The entire first floor of City Hall was packed, as was the staircase leading up to it, as some of the most important men in New York came to witness the proceedings. The crowd was so big that Steinway’s plans to make the announcement on the first floor had to be scrapped, and he was forced up to the landing between the first and second floors. William C. Whitney was there representing the Metropolitan Traction Company. Melville C. Smith was there on behalf of the Arcade Railway. Mayor Hugh Grant was there, as was his newly elected successor, Thomas Francis Gilroy.

At noon, Steinway asked for quiet. He explained that the law required that the terms of the sale and specifics of the construction be read first, and for the next hour Parsons shared in the task of reading the entire forty-three-page pamphlet. It was explained that any successful bidder would have to pay expenses of the commission that totaled $111,594, plus the $25,000 fees for the commissioners. A last requirement was that any serious bidder must be prepared at that moment to hand over 10 percent of their bid, in cash, as a show of good faith. The details finished, Eugene Bushe, the commission’s secretary, shouted out into the vast rotunda for any bidders to step forward. Silence filled the room. He called out again, and again there was no response. Then, on a third call, a voice shot back from the crowd.

A tall, skinny, clean-shaven man stepped forward, moving with a nervous energy. He announced his name as William Amory, a resident of West Ninety-fourth Street, and he said he was prepared to make his bid. In a room full of powerful and important men who controlled the majority of New York’s transit operations, a puzzled state fell over the room.

He said that he bid five hundred dollars for the franchise, plus half of 1 percent of the gross receipts per year. By his estimation, the city would collect fifty thousand dollars a year for a total over the life of the lease of $50 million. His bid was stunningly low, but it was the only bid. The commissioners, joined by Gilroy, quickly huddled, and when they broke they said that Amory’s bid failed to meet the requirements.

“In what respect is it defective?” Amory shouted back.

“The commissioners will consider that matter,” Bushe said, “and give you an answer afterward.”

Amory quickly said that he was withdrawing that bid and submitting another. He said that he now bid $1,000 outright for the franchise. The commissioners were silent briefly, as they hoped desperately that Bushe could pry out one more bid from the crowd. But when no one else came forward, Amory was told to follow the commissioners into the mayor’s private office. The entire event was barely an hour old. Once inside, Amory handed over one hundred dollars, which was the required 10 percent of his bid. The commissioners asked who his financial backers were, since they were convinced he was not rich enough himself to take on the subway project, but Amory refused to answer. He was handed a receipt for his money and guided out into the hall so the commissioners could meet in private. In his mind, he was now the rightful owner of the New York City subway project. He had bid and paid his 10 percent, and the commissioners, by taking his money, had accepted his offer. But a half hour later, Amory was called back to the mayor’s office. He was handed his one hundred dollars along with a piece of paper.

Resolved: That the bids made this day by W. Nowland Amory, as follows, namely: One bid of $500 and one half of 1 percent upon the gross receipts of the proposed railroad and the other bid of $1,000 cash are not deemed by this commission to be advantageous to the public and the City of New York or its interests and the bids are hereby rejected pursuant to the right reserved by the terms of the sale, and that the sum of $100 deposited by him be returned to him.

For the next few days Amory was the fascination of every New Yorker. Two days after the auction,
The Times
ran a lengthy profile of him. The newspaper described him as a man “of fine personal appearance,” thirty-five years old, from a financial and military family of Massachusetts. He was born in Arkansas, where his father had been stationed as an infantry officer, and he attended the prestigious St. Paul’s private school in Concord, New Hampshire. When he settled in New York, he worked as the secretary for the New York District Railway, successfully convincing hundreds of property owners along Broadway and Madison Avenue to permit the railroad’s construction. Even though the railroad never happened, he had proved he was a formidable businessman with strong powers of persuasion. But he was unable to persuade the members of the Steinway commission that he could find a way to pay for the construction of their subway, and as 1893 got under way Amory was soon nothing more than a footnote in the seemingly never-ending New York City subway debate.

*   *   *

STEINWAY WAS MORTIFIED AT THE
outcome of the commission’s two-year effort. A few hours after the auction ended, he met with reporters back at 22 William Street. The disappointment in his words was obvious, as he knew that the commission was no closer to getting a subway built than any of the men before him:

Much has been made about the objections to underground transit. All this, however, is answered in the fact no well-planned and equipped tunnel, properly ventilated and lighted and free from the gases of combustion, has yet been in operation; but we all know that the achievements of modern science make these conditions now obtainable.

It is unfortunate that New York is not to lead in this matter, for Broadway is probably the only existing artery of the world where such a line of transit could certainly be made successful from a financial point of view.