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

by Most, Doug

  “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.

  And with that he said the commission had no choice but to forget about building a subway and pursue an extension of its elevated system, anything to help the city develop its land to the north and encourage people to move out of the overcrowded downtown and midtown neighborhoods. “Something must be done quickly to relieve the pressure,” Steinway said, “and to give renewed impetus to the city’s growth in a northerly direction.” It was his first acknowledgment of failure, and Steinway, whose body at the age of fifty-eight was starting to break down, since his knees caused so much pain that he needed a cane to walk, began to suffer not just physically but also emotionally. In his diary, he jotted down a reflection on January 14, 1893. “To my dismay I see I stand alone in my stand to guard the City from being further disfigured in streets,” he wrote. “I feel dreadful.”

  Two months later, on March 4, 1893, the day before Steinway’s birthday, his wife, Ellie, died of a heart attack. Only a month earlier, Steinway had sent a condolence telegram to his friend, William Whitney, who was mourning the sudden loss of his wife, Flora, at the age of fifty. Flora was buried in a marble grave next to their daughter Olive, and on the front page of The World it was reported that the elegant Whitney mansion “has become a house of mourning, and the man who could have any office in the gift of President-elect Cleveland and would accept none is prostrated by the bier of a dead wife.” Now another member of New York’s establishment, William Steinway, was in mourning, too. In his diary from that day forward, he would note repeatedly how Ellie’s death destroyed him.

  * * *

  ANOTHER FINANCIAL MELTDOWN SAVED STEINWAY. The ripple effects from the collapse of the mighty Baring Brothers bank in London three years earlier were still lingering. One by one, the pieces of string that held together America’s economy unraveled. First the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, then the mammoth rope manufacturer National Cordage Company, and finally the banks toppled. The country’s credit system folded, stock prices plummeted, and fortunes disappeared. More than 140 national banks went under, and by year’s end sixteen thousand businesses were gone, too, making the panic of 1893 worse than those in 1873, 1857, and 1837. Police went house to house and found some seventy thousand people unemployed. At least twenty thousand homeless people camped at police stations and shelters.

  New Yorkers did not realize it at the time, but the panic of 1893 saved them from living without a subway for years to come. It became clearer than ever that any citywide massive-transportation project would have to be paid for by the government, not private businessmen whose fortunes could vanish in a flash. Six years after Abram Hewitt first proposed his financing plan, it was back on the table.

  * * *

  HEWITT SO DESPISED ANYONE he believed was standing in the way of progress that he made no attempt to hide his contempt, even when that person might one day become president of the United States. William Whitney was such a man. Hewitt and Whitney in the early years of the 1890s were at their zeniths of power. Despite their differences, they were both being talked about as Democratic presidential candidates. And their opinions on the matter of transportation in the city were as influential as any. Hewitt had established himself as the leading advocate for a subway and was putting all of his efforts into promoting his plan for city ownership rather than leaving it in private hands. Whitney controlled those private hands, as the owner of the Metropolitan Traction Company, the mammoth street-transit company. Had the two men managed to think alike and work together, there is little doubt a subway would have been built much sooner. Instead, their opposing views, stubbornness, and independent interests kept them from ever joining forces in the interests of New Yorkers. The tension that existed between Hewitt and Whitney came to life when the two men were vacationing in London. Whitney was coming down the steps of the Bristol Hotel just as Hewitt was walking up, and they were stunned to see each other on the other side of the pond.

  “Hello, Hewitt,” Whitney said. “Are you going back to the states soon?”

  Hewitt shot back, “No.”

  “Well, you ought to go back and take the nomination for the presidency. You deserve it,” Whitney said politely. Though Whitney, a former navy secretary, was actually being mentioned more favorably than Hewitt, an ousted mayor, for the nomination, he had clearly indicated that he had no interest in running for office. But Hewitt did not receive the words kindly from a man he respected so little.

  “You ought to go back and stand trial for the Metropolitan Street Railway operations,” Hewitt snapped at Whitney. “You deserve to get a jail term.”

  Whitney laughed at first, only to stop when he realized the former mayor was not joking. The two men, as powerful as any in New York City, would never become close. For Hewitt, the living conditions in New York were the responsibility of those who could bring about real change, from politicians to wealthy financiers, and in his eyes Whitney had never done his part. Because they traveled in the same social circles, their paths crossed often. But to Hewitt, Whitney stood for all the evils of big business, a millionaire who built his fortune through inheritance, consolidation, and, he believed, even corruption, although there was little evidence of the latter. As the man who controlled New York’s street railway operations, Whitney could have pushed for more radical change, more innovation, than he did, but to Hewitt it seemed all Whitney wanted was to make incremental changes, like free transfers, that helped his transit company’s bottom line but nothing else. Hewitt would have probably enjoyed a better relationship with Whitney’s brother, Henry, in Boston, a man who proposed tunneling under the sacred Boston Common despite fierce opposition and who pursued Frank Sprague’s electric streetcars before any other major city had such foresight. William Whitney’s conservative and questionable decision to choose cable over electricity was exactly the sort of backward thinking that galled the forward-thinking Hewitt.

  Whitney’s cable streetcars, along with Gould’s elevated lines, were dominating New York’s streets. The Metropolitan Traction Company was becoming a monster, swallowing up smaller companies that controlled Houston Street, Sixth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, Twenty-third Street, Lexington Avenue, Broadway, and others, planning cable extensions for all of them. Whitney’s biographer would later call it his “Empire on Wheels.”

  The “nerve center” was a nine-story building, called appropriately the Cable Building, at 621 Broadway, which dwarfed its neighborhood at the corner of Houston Street. The headquarter offices were on the eighth floor, but it was in the basement where the power plant was a sight to see. Enormous cables wrapped around giant belts went around and around for miles in an endless loop. It was impossible to imagine a cable snapping, as they were made of six steel strands with nineteen twisted wires, and each one weighed about forty tons. But inevitably they did break, and the fixes, costly and time consuming, would bring the huge steam engine that powered them to a halt.

  * * *

  NOWHERE IN NEW YORK were the conditions more desperate for relief in the mid-1890s than Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where a mass of buildings that were typically seven stories high crammed more people inside of them than seemed possible. While New York City as a whole had seventy-six people per acre of land, the Lower East Side had almost ten times that amount, anywhere between three hundred and seven hundred per acre. It was one of the most crowded places on the planet. The living conditions were dark, wet, cold, rancid, and vermin-infested, and diseases like diphtheria and tuberculosis were common, thanks to poor sanitation and the lack of private toilets and adequate ventilation. Staying c
lean in a neighborhood filled with horse stables, brothels, slaughterhouses, and saloons was impossible. And yet there was nowhere else for the immigrants to go. Moreover, because they were at least living among others who spoke their language, understood their traditions, and practiced their religion, they were reluctant to assimilate and seek out change.

  New York, like Boston, Chicago, and other big American cities filling up with immigrants, was not so much a melting pot yet as a countertop with separate piles of different immigrant groups. Changing that would take one issue that would benefit both the rich and the poor, that could improve the way of life across an entire city, and that the men in power could unite behind. As the last decade of the nineteenth century reached its midway point, that issue was rapid transit.

  London had three times as many residents as New York, but New York had more miles of mass transit. And while the average London resident took just seventy-four rides per year, about one every five days, New Yorkers were going gangbusters on their systems, taking almost three hundred trips a year, making it a part of their everyday existence. The only problem was that thousands of immigrants were streaming in through Ellis Island every month and the cable streetcars and elevated trains could not keep up. It was almost as if for every steamship of immigrants that arrived, a ferryboat full of New Yorkers left the city, tired of the overcrowding. The system needed to get faster. It needed to go farther. And it needed to run beneath the streets. And it needed to be built now.

  * * *

  ON MAY 22, 1894, Steinway got his shot at redemption. The state legislature of New York passed a second Rapid Transit Act, which had one major difference from the act of 1891. As the embarrassing public auction had shown, rich, private capitalists had no appetite for taking on the burden of a subway. This time, the city would own the subway and lease it to a contractor, just as Abram Hewitt had first proposed six years earlier. Hewitt also got the man he wanted named as the new commission’s chief engineer, William Parsons. And as yet another sign of how serious this new commitment was, the new Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners held their first meeting on June 8, 1894, only two weeks after the act passed. They wasted no time debating elevated lines versus a subway.