The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway (55 page)

“I resolved to go straight to a man who was all powerful”: Ibid.

It was a secret that Whitney took to his grave: “Crisis in Subways that Belmont Met,”
New York Times,
October 2, 1913.

“Constructing the tunnel will be simple”: “Talks of Tunnel Plans,”
New York Times,
January 18, 1900.

15: PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE

“stood out like poppies in a dandelion field”: “Edwin A. Robinson, Poet, Is Dead at 66,”
New York Times,
April 6, 1935.

“Haven’t you any water or soap in Yonkers?”: “Dirty Italians Lectured,”
New York Times
, March 25, 1900.

It was supposed to be a miserable day of rain: “Rapid Transit Tunnel Begun,”
New York Times,
March 25, 1900.

“The completion of this undertaking”: Ibid.

“Bravo, old man”: Ibid.

“If your laborers shirk work like that”: Bobrick,
Labyrinths of Iron,
227.

Two days later, on March 26, 1900, at the corner of Bleecker and Greene streets: “Actual Work on the Big Tunnel Begun,”
New York Times,
March 27, 1900.

A single actor named Joseph Jefferson played Rip Van Winkle more than 2,500 times: Felicia Londre and Margot Berthold,
The History of World Theater
(Continuum International Publishing Group, 1999), 213.

At Sherry’s on Forty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue: New York Public Library, Menus,
http://menus.nypl.org/menus/13242
.

Giant mastodon bones surfaced near Dyckman Street: New York Transit Museum with Heller,
City Beneath Us,
19.

It came to be called the Bloody Pit: Carl Byron,
A Pinprick of Light
(New England Press, 1995), 1.

“I am no prophet”:
New York World,
December 23, 2004.

His task was a routine and essential one: “Rapid Transit Sub-Contract Let,”
New York Times,
March 24, 1900.

A mixture of Italians, Swedes, blacks, and Irish: “Actual Work on the Big Tunnel Begun,”
New York Times,
March 27, 1900.

“I’m on strike”: “Tunnel Strike Was Brief,”
New York Times,
April 3, 1900.

It sat on a rock at such a steep angle: Hood,
722 Miles,
87.

Ira Shaler was never the war hero like his father: “Major Ira A. Shaler Dead,”
New York Times,
June 30, 1902.

“Run for your life!”: “Death in Tunnel Dynamite Explosion,”
New York Times,
January 28, 1902.

On the morning of January 27: Ibid.

“blow the whole hill to hell”: “Excess of Dynamite Stored in Tunnel,”
New York Times
, February 5, 1902.

“I thought the end of us had come”: Ibid.

But the hotel manager, a kindly fellow named Washington L. Jacques: Ibid.

“I knew that something big was on hand”: Ibid.

Two months after the fatal blast: “Cave-in and Ruin Along Park Avenue,”
New York Times,
March 22, 1902.

“This accident.… was one which could not be foreseen”: Ibid.

“Hoodoo Contractor”: “Major Shaler Crushed Under Fall of Rock,”
New York Times,
June 18, 1902.

They arrived on June 17, a few minutes before eight o’clock, and all three men walked down into the ground: Ibid.

“That stone doesn’t look right to me”: New York Transit Museum with Heller,
City Beneath Us,
22.

“I think my back is broken”: “Major Shaler Crushed Under Fall of Rock,”
New York Times
, June 18, 1902.

“It was simply Major Shaler’s ill fortune”: Malcolm,
William Barclay Parsons,
51.

Shaler’s death shook Parsons: Ibid.

“We have the tools and machinery”: “Parsons and McDonald Clash over Subway,”
New York Times,
September 18, 1903.

“Clash?” Parsons answered: Ibid.

Andrew Carnegie, was awarded the bid to supply: “Sub-Contracts for Tunnel Awarded,”
New York Times,
April 17, 1900.

The moment the Miners’ Union got word: “Miners Flock to New York,”
New York Times,
April 28, 1901.

“they are in love with life in the bowels of the earth”: Ibid.

It was about ten thirty at night on October 24: “Death and Destruction by Subway Blast,”
New York Times,
October 25, 1903; “Ten Were Killed in Subway Disaster,”
New York Times,
October 26, 1903.

“Kyrie, eleison,” or “Lord have mercy”: Ibid.

“Sorry for you, little man”: Ibid.

“Whether the falling in of the mass of rock was due to moisture”: Ibid.

“a seam that could not have been detected”: Malcolm,
William Barclay Parsons,
52.

“The rock was weaker than any of us knew”: New York Transit Museum with Heller,
City Beneath Us,
23.

On New Year’s Day of 1904, New York’s newest mayor: “On Handcars Through Six Miles of Subway,”
New York Times,
January 2, 1904.

On January 28, 1904, a Thursday evening, Whitney joined his secretary: “William C. Whitney Passes Away,”
New York Times,
February 3, 1904.

eulogized Whitney in the pages of
Harper’s Weekly
: “William Collins Whitney,”
Harper’s Weekly
, February 27, 1904.

Dr. Thomas Darlington, New York’s commissioner for public health, wrote an essay in the Sunday
World:
Bobrick,
Labyrinths of Iron
, 232.

If a fuse on the front engine burns out
: “Some Subway ‘Ifs’ and ‘Don’ts,’”
New York Times
, October 27, 1904.

16: OCTOBER 27, 1904

For older New Yorkers, October 27, 1904, had a familiar feel: “Our Subway Open, 150,000 Try It; Mayor McClellan Runs the First Official Train,”
New York Times,
October 28, 1904.

“Git a programme”: Ibid.

“I don’t want the public to pass judgment on the road”: “Subway Opening Today with Simple Ceremony,”
New York Times,
October 27, 1904.

“Presented to August Belmont by the directors”: “Loving Cup to Belmont Given at Subway Feast,”
New York Times
, October 28, 1904.

“The subway would not have been built if I had not taken hold of the work”: Walker,
Fifty Years of Rapid Transit,
167.

“When the dirt is off your shovel”: Michael W. Brooks,
Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York
(Rutgers University Press, 1997), 64.

“Without rapid transit, Greater New York”: “Exercises in City Hall,”
New York Times,
October 28, 1904.

“Mr. Mayor, Mr. Orr, and Mr. President”: Ibid.

“I scarcely believe that their patience”: Ibid.

“I, as mayor, in the name of the people”: Ibid.

“Doesn’t fit very well”: “McClellan Motorman of First Subway Train,”
New York Times,
October 28, 1904.

“Shall I slow her down here”: Ibid.

“Slower, here, sloooow-er!” Ibid.

“Well, that was a little tiresome”: Ibid.

In the next five hours, 111,881 passengers would pay to ride the subway: “Rush Hour Blockade Jams Subway Crowds,”
New York Times,
October 29, 1904.

“Let ’em in”: “McClellan Motorman of First Subway Train,”
New York Times,
October 28, 1904.

EPILOGUE

In Boston, on September 3, 1897, two day after America’s first subway opened: “Novelty Over,”
Boston Daily Globe,
September 3, 1897.

F. B. Shipley stood up: “Our Subway Open, 150,000 Try It,”
New York Times,
October 28, 1904.

And it took barely a minute of operation: “Lost Diamonds in Subway,”
New York Times,
October 28, 1904.

Sadly for Sprague, who died on October 25: Harriet Chapman Jones Sprague,
Frank J. Sprague and the Edison Myth
(William Frederick Press, 1947).

A rambling letter to his daughter Laura in 1914: Letter from Henry Whitney to daughter, October 28, 1914, courtesy of Laura Marshall to author.

And all he left behind was $1,221.93, a $400 Dodge: “H.M. Whitney Left $1,221,”
New York Times,
June 22, 1923.

On a bitter morning in February 1912: “Visit Old Pneumatic Tunnel,”
New York Times,
February 9, 1912; Brennan,
Beach Pneumatic;
Hood,
722 Miles,
48.

One count tallied 2,131 shipwrecks: Malcolm,
William Barclay Parsons,
78.

On March 21, 2013, a present-day sandhog: “To Save a Man’s Life, a Muddy Tug of War with the Earth Itself,”
New York Times,
March 20, 2013; “Trapped Worker Rescued by FDNY Says Thanks,” New York
Daily News,
April 17, 2013.

In New York, 1.7 billion trips: MTA Facts and Figures,
http://www.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm
; “MBTA Ridership Hits New Record,”
Boston Globe,
July 31, 2012.

an article appeared in the
Los Angeles Times
: “L.A. to N.Y. in Half an Hour?,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 11, 1972.

“Safe, convenient, low-cost, efficient”: Robert M. Salter, “Trans-Planetary Subway Systems,” The Rand Paper Series, The Rand Corporation, February 1978, 1.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blodgett, Geoffrey.
The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Bobrick, Benson.
Labyrinths of Iron: Subways in History, Myth, Art, Technology, and War.
New York: Henry Holt, 1981.

_____
.
Parsons Brinckerhoff: The First 100 Years.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985.

Brennan, Joseph.
Beach Pneumatic: Alfred Beach’s Pneumatic Subway and the Beginnings of Rapid Transit in New York.
2004–05.
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beach/
.

Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace.
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Byron, Carl.
A Pinprick of Light: The Troy and Greenfield Railroad and Its Hoosac Tunnel.
Shelburne, Vt.: New England Press, 1974.

Caplovich, Judd.
Blizzard! The Great Storm of ’88.
Vernon, Conn.: VeRo, 1987.

Cashman, Sean Dennis.
America in the Gilded Age: From the Death of Lincoln to the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
New York: New York University Press, 1984.

Cheape, Charles W.
Moving the Masses: Urban Public Transit in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, 1880–1912
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Clarke, Bradley H., and O. R. Cummings.
Tremont Street Subway: A Century of Public Service
. Boston: Boston Street Railway Association, 1997.

Clarke, Ted.
Brookline, Allston-Brighton and the Renewal of Boston.
Charleston: History Press, 2010.

Cudahy, Brian.
Cash, Tokens and Transfers: A History of Urban Mass Transit in North America
. New York: Fordham University Press, 1982.

_____
.
Change at Park Street Under.
Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Greene Press, 1972.

Dalzell, Frederick.
Engineering Invention: Frank J. Sprague and the U.S. Electrical Industry.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.

De Hahn, Tracee.
The Blizzard of 1888.
Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001.

Duveneck, Josephine Whitney.
Life on Two Levels: An Autobiography.
Los Altos Hills, Calif.: Trust for Hidden Villa, 1978.

Fogelson, Robert.
Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Gies, Joseph.
Adventure Underground: The Story of the World’s Greatest Tunnels.
New York: Doubleday, 1962.

Hirsch, Mark David.
William C. Whitney:
Modern Warwick.
Archon Books, 1969.

Howard, Brett.
Boston: A Social History.
New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976.

Hoyt, Edwin.
The Whitneys: An Informal Portrait, 1635–1975.
New York: Weybright and Talley, 1976.

Illustrated Boston, the Metropolis of New England.
New York: American Publishing and Engraving, 1889.

Katz, Wallace B.
The New York Rapid Transit Decision of 1900.
Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, National Park Service, n.d.
http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/The_New_York_Rapid_Transit_Decision_of_1900_(Katz)
.

Kay, Jane Holtz.
Lost Boston.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

Kennedy, Lawrence.
Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630
. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.

King, Moses.
King’s Handbook of Boston.
Cambridge: Moses King, 1883.

Kruh, David.
Always Something Doing: Boston’s Infamous Scollay Square
. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.

Lyons, Louis.
Newspaper Story: One Hundred Years of “The Boston Globe.”
Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

MacGillivray, Don. “Henry Melville Whitney Comes to Cape Breton: The Saga of a Gilded Age Entrepreneur.”
Acadiensis,
vol. 9, no. 1, Autumn 1979.

Malcolm, Tom.
William Barclay Parsons: A Renaissance Man of Old New York.
New York: Parsons Brinckerhoff, 2010.

McCullough, David.
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

McShane, Clay, and Joel A. Tarr.
The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century
. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Middleton, William D., and William D. Middleton III.
Frank Julian Sprague: Electrical Inventor and Engineer
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.