Conquering Gotham

by Jill Jonnes

  While many Gothamites felt little ire over gambling, Sunday drinking, or hardened streetwalkers, almost all recoiled at white slavery. The new Republican justice William Travers Jerome (a last-minute gubernatorial appointment before Teddy headed to D.C.) barnstormed the city bluntly describing how squads of smooth-talking Lotharios called “cadets” (protected by Tammany) now worked the immigrant tenement districts, luring naive young women into “romances.” Promised respectable matrimony, these innocents instead found themselves imprisoned in brothels and “ruined.” “The girl in there [the whorehouse] has no means by which she can escape,” explained Jerome, a most unlikely looking firebrand with his rimless glasses and bow ties. “Her clothes have been taken from her: she has perhaps a wrapper, a pair of stockings, and slippers…Literally, screams issuing from the upper windows of such a house, and heard by men in the street, are by policemen in the street not heard or investigated. They do not dare hear; they do not dare investigate; the keeper of the house pays protection. You hear talk about the horrors of white slavery…like hearing evil fairy tales…of far-off lands.” But it was a chilling and growing reality in the Manhattan of 1901.

  As other reform groups mobilized and pressure built, Richard Croker returned home, gathered his leaders, and tersely instructed them to rein in the worst of their excesses. When one Tammany brave objected, the grizzled Croker bounded up in fury, hissing, “If the people find anything is wrong, you can be sure that the people can put a stop to it, and will!” When Croker sailed back to England, however, his minions were in sullen revolt, determined to keep raking in the lucre of vice, said to be $3 million a year for the police department alone.

  Tammany predictably began subterranean whisper campaigns, warning Baldwin that if he persisted in his investigations he “would find his business responsibilities interfered with, that means would be devised for hampering the operations of the railroad corporation of which he was head.” As the rumors and threats swirled about, Baldwin declared, “I have taken up this work for the city and I propose to go on with it. If there is any dread lest my responsibilities in the management of the railroad may be interfered with, my resignation as President is ready. This work of the Fifteen I have promised the community to do, and I shall do it to the best of my ability.”

  It was not hard to imagine the PRR’s directors rather taken aback to find the president of one of their new subsidiaries engaged in such lurid rabble-rousing. Negro uplift was all very well, but rousting out prostitutes? Even as Alexander Cassatt was inspecting the Quai d’Orsay Station and then seeking out Jacobs in London in August 1901, Committee of Fifteen investigators pressed on, engaged in their own unusual inspections, again and again documenting that prostitution continued to be open and rampant. During a typical encounter in the Tenderloin on the warm midnight of August 30, a dark-haired French woman at 128 West Thirty-first Street solicited the two detectives engaged in this odd form of civic betterment.

  Once inside with the men, she disrobed, reported John Earl, “She got on the bed, exposed her parts to me and wanted me to have sexual intercourse with her which I declined to do.” Instead, he dutifully filed his report, one of hundreds showing what police routinely ignored. Little did William Baldwin dream the previous summer that his antivice crusading and the PRR’s most fundamental interests were soon to intersect in this seamy neighborhood. And yet within months this benighted piece of real estate had come to be absolutely essential to the PRR’s decades-old dream of conquering Gotham.

  NINE

  “SOMEONE IN THE PENN IS LEAKING”

  The day after President McKinley’s death, Richard Croker, grayer and grimmer than ever, stepped off the S.S. Lucania ready to wage political war. Escorted by several top lieutenants as he walked off the pier, Croker’s face was its usual stoic mask. He brushed aside the reporters with a “Nothing to say, boys.” Nothing was more important to Tammany than the imminent mayoral election, for City Hall was the key to everything that nourished the voracious Tammany Tiger—above all the jobs, the permits, the franchises, and all the gears of government-generated boodle. The city was in a quickly escalating state of high political agitation and excitement. Indeed, the whole nation was watching this election.

  As drama it did not disappoint. Seth Low, scion of a silk merchant, wealthy ex-mayor of Brooklyn, just-resigned president of Columbia University, led the reform Fusion ticket, running for mayor. Rotund, with sandy, wavy hair and a matching bristle mustache, Low was “very competent, very dignified, and rather dull.” It was an unfortunate fact that people respected Low but did not like him. He was a cold fish. Tammany’s rambunctious chief of police Richard Devery stroked his luxuriant whiskers and bestowed upon Low the jeering nickname of “Little Eva.”

  The canny Croker, in a move denounced as “audacious and desperately skillful,” put up for mayor the excellent Edward M. Shepard, a Brooklyn attorney of sterling character, most admired for prosecuting Tammany vote fraud. The reform firebrand Justice William Travers Jerome ran for district attorney, whipping up his tenement audiences to collective outrage over the Ice Trust and the reviled “cadets.” As the raucous election season careened along, Croker holed up in his elegant Democratic Club way up Fifth Avenue. “From early morning until far into the night, the Boss was at work, pouring men and money into crucial districts; driving his lieutenants to their uttermost; tapping every channel of influence and power.”

  Election Day—Tuesday November 5—dawned gray and wet, to Tammany’s delight. Many a well-dressed New Yorker, the kind who favored reform, would not want to venture forth in inclement weather. Nonetheless, from the minute the polls opened at 6:00 a.m., the men of Greater New York poured forth to vote. The camera “experts” from newspapers like Joseph Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s American snapped photographs as the candidates voted. By evening, wide rivers of excited New Yorkers flowed into the main avenues looking for news. Those heading to the big plaza at City Hall and newspaper row were unable to advance because the whole place was a great construction pit for August Belmont Jr.’s new subway. Uptown, the huge sea of citizens forced the closing of Broadway as they watched returns on a big sheet on the New York Times Building. Everyone knew it was over as the returns came in from the Lower East Side tenement districts. The crowds gasped. Low, the Silk Stocking reformer, was winning! Tammany was out.

  Three days later, on Friday morning at 10:46, Alexander Cassatt telephoned Samuel Rea at the PRR’s sixteenth-floor Manhattan office and left a message, “The purchase of that property ought to be started at once, and I will be glad if you will take up the matter with Mr. B[aldwin] and agree upon a line of action. Call me on the telephone if you want to say anything.” Low’s victory was a most felicitous development for the Pennsylvania Railroad, a triumph engineered in part by William Baldwin and his Committee of Fifteen. The secret buying of the Tenderloin would now begin.

  On this very same day, November 8, Cassatt received the definitive answer he had so fervently hoped for—Charles Jacobs reported that he believed the subaqueous railroad tunnels could be safely built and operated, thus making possible the whole gargantuan enterprise. Beginning with a double-track line across New Jersey’s marshy Hackensack Meadows, they would dig two tunnels through the Bergen Cliffs, continue down under the mile-wide Hudson, emerging deep underneath a great terminal. From there two tunnels, each with two tracks, would continue on under and through Manhattan, becoming four separate tunnels under the East River. Two would be for the LIRR, and would thus create a through ride all the way from the mainland to Long Island. The two other tunnels would serve the PRR, whose empty trains would terminate in Sunnyside, Queens. There would be built the largest passenger-car yard in the world. Better yet, in a nine-page preliminary estimate, Jacobs projected a $40 million cost for the whole monumental project, including their own Grand Depot. This was far less than the original $100 million price for the colossal North River Bridge or even Lindenthal’s scaled-back version for $46.5 million. And so the PRR co
uld launch its opening moves in the Tenderloin with confidence.

  Within the week, real estate man Douglas Robinson wrote Cassatt, “We have gone systematically to work since Friday to get the prices at which the owners will sell the various plots, and have succeeded in getting prices on several. We think in a couple of weeks we will be able to know pretty well at what price the full plot of land can be bought.” At the same time, Samuel Rea wrote Cassatt warning him, “There has been so much talk about—bridges tunnels subways etc—that property owners on west side in vicinity of our location are skeptical.” The PRR’s opponents especially were already on guard as the railroad studied the real estate chessboard of these strategic blocks. Rea proposed they capture selected properties throughout their site to “establish prices.” Wondered Rea, “Do you not think if we invest say $200,000 now judiciously, and promptly, that we could then ease and go at it leisurely, so as not to excite suspicion?”

  And so the great high-stakes real estate acquisition began. As Douglas Robinson would later relate, “The actual work of purchasing was done by three men, the blocks being more or less evenly divided between them, and when they were sent out to make the purchases they, themselves, did not know who was the actual buyer of the property.” Robinson’s three buyers, unaware of one another, but blessed with a string of crisp fall days, fanned out across the Tenderloin carrying big wads of cash in their pockets and option contracts provided by the Title Guarantee & Trust Company. On any given block, they aimed to buy a range of building types to determine, and then set, local values.

  During those autumn days, the three men discreetly inquired and sought out those who controlled certain buildings. “The owners,” Robinson would later explain, “being of moderate means and mostly workmen, had to be traced to all parts of the city, and out of the city, but as quickly as it was possible.” And so, the men hopped on the elevated trains, rode the ferries to the other boroughs, quietly tracking down Tiernans, Conklings, Ackermans, and Werckeles. “If his [or her] price corresponded with our appraisal of the lot in question, a copy of the option was drawn and he was induced, if possible, to sign it (and it may be said that the first sellers signed with perfect willingness). Five hundred ($500) dollars was given to the seller and the signature on the option was witnessed, so that it became a binding document.” With speed and secrecy critical, Robinson quickly drew up sales contracts, wrote checks, and dispatched each man to retrace his steps and seal yet another deal.

  Despite this caution, rumors were rampant within a week. Robinson scrawled a note to Baldwin, “I’m afraid someone in the Penn is leaking. We tried to buy a piece of property and were told by the owner that she knew what was up…that someone in the employ of Penn told her the RR had decided to buy all the block. I tell you this for what it is worth. A man we bought from last night backed out today said he had heard it definitely and wants a higher price and told him I wouldn’t buy and did so to bluff him.” Undaunted, the PRR scooped up shabby houses and stores and warehouses, for $6,000 here, $40,000 there. Wrote Robinson, “Within two weeks, we had secured a great many lots…thereby establishing…the value of the adjoining parcels…At that time the buildings in the Terminal zone were occupied by many negroes, saloons, dance halls, gambling joints, and for many other purposes which made the work of those who did the buying not only difficult, but also often dangerous; although it is fair to admit that of the large sums carried in cash never one cent was lost through encounters with the owners or their tenants.” Robinson and Rea moved swiftly but carefully, for they needed a good sampling of prices, their biggest future weapon if condemnation became a necessary tactic against owners holding out for big sums. Baldwin sent Robinson’s note about “someone in the Penn leaking” on to Cassatt that same Thursday, suggesting, “It may be well to call off the buying for a few days.”

  Then, on December 1 as the weather turned wintry, the New-York Tribune broke the story that it was rumored to be none other than the PRR buying land as fast as it could amidst the brothels and saloons. However, “real estate dealers in the neighborhood of the reported terminal said…they had no definite knowledge.” Baldwin, Cassatt’s point man in Manhattan, was not about to confirm such rumors, saying ingenuously, “I think the story must have arisen from the rumor that a bridge was to be built across the North River.” The paper, in turn, noted that the site was “only a few blocks away from the terminus of the [proposed] North River Bridge.” Baldwin, the executive who knew best how the whole complex political scene operated, wrote Cassatt the next day to commiserate. “The reports about land purchases are very exasperating…Nobody in my office or in the L.I.R.R. knows a thing about the purchases of the Stuyvesant Land Co. There has not been the scratch of a pen. I think that observing people expect you to build a tunnel.” In that first month, the PRR had bought sixty-eight parcels for $2,398,750.

  The PRR had tried to further disguise its identity and distract its opponents by creating the Stuyvesant Real Estate Company. But to no avail. The speculators began to circle, scenting easy pickings and profits. For years, said one real estate man, Seventh Avenue had been “like a chinese wall…beyond which no respectable man or woman could safely go. It is known to be filled with thugs, bums, and wicked negroes.” Now, all that would be changing. Sensing his corporate enemies gathering, Cassatt felt forced to press forward before he was truly ready.

  TEN

  “THE TOWN IS ON FIRE”

  As the thin winter light dawned on Wednesday December 11, 1901, the wealthier classes of Gotham opened that day’s New York Times to read on the front page that the night before a gigantic broken water main at Madison and Fifty-fifth Street had created an explosive gusher, causing a mighty flood for blocks all around. “Rich Homes Are Wrecked” read one subhead. Down on Thirty-first and Broadway, yet more disaster—crackling sheets of flames had engulfed a building, scorching a dance academy, a boxing studio, a pool hall, and threatening the Bijou Theater. A team of horses had bolted, injuring the driver. Back in the sports pages, the six-day cycle race at Madison Square Garden was in its third day before roaring crowds, while a small item reported that the streetcar strike in Scranton had become violent.

  But for certain readers, men of affairs whose holdings included railroad stocks and bonds, the story that mattered most sat squarely in the center of that plain gray front page (eschewing the new-style blaring headlines and photographs of Pulitzer and Hearst). A small double-decker headline read, “May Build a Tunnel under North River” “The Pennsylvania Road Having Plans for It Prepared.” The source of this calamitous breach in secrecy was plainly identified as the Pennsy’s own financiers, Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

  Worse than this front-page revelation, Alexander Cassatt feared that unnamed forces hostile to the PRR were mobilizing a rearguard real estate action to checkmate its entry to Gotham. “It was hoped,” Alexander Cassatt explained to his board soon thereafter, “that [our] plan might be kept from the knowledge of the public until it was more matured and until further purchases of real estate had been made. [But] information was received which caused it to be feared that rival interests might acquire—and were perhaps actually about to acquire—property in the area selected for the station site, which might have blocked the whole plan.” The PRR’s enemies were preparing to pounce.

  The New York Times article admitted that “the exact location for this tunnel could not be learned,” but then guessed it would be “near the terminal of the Long Island Railroad tunnel at Thirty-second Street and Seventh Avenue.” Newspaper stories were a deep worry, but it was the specter of shadowy opposition—almost certainly the Vanderbilts, perhaps also subway magnate August Belmont—coalescing to strike, that forced the Pennsylvania into preemptive action.

  That very same morning, Wednesday December 11, 1901, even as households were opening their morning newspapers, LIRR lawyer William J. Kelly was rushing to board the New York Central line to ride upriver along the Hudson to Albany. There in the state capitol he formally incorporated an
entity known as the Pennsylvania & New York Extension Railroad Company. “It was deemed necessary to at once take out a charter,” explained Cassatt, “and cover the route and station property by filing a plan…in accordance with the law…so that we are now protected against the taking of the station site or the occupancy of the proposed route by any adverse interests.”

  That afternoon in Manhattan, after the stock market closed, Alexander Cassatt had the great satisfaction of issuing an announcement: At long last the Pennsylvania Railroad was coming into Gotham in grand, utterly modern style. Not, as surprised New Yorkers had heard rumored, over a shared North River Bridge, but via underwater tunnels buried deep below the Hudson River. Even Joseph Pulitzer’s ever-savvy World reported, “Until the announcement…yesterday everybody but the initiated believed that the Pennsylvania was buying land for a bridge approach.”

  Cassatt’s quietly triumphant statement released that Wednesday afternoon was all of six paragraphs long and conveyed only the barest details: “The line as adopted will traverse the City of New York from the Hudson River to the East River and be underground throughout and at such depth as not to interfere with future construction of subways by the city on all its avenues.” Not until the next day when the PRR’s plans—still rather sketchy—were filed downtown in the Office of the County Clerk, did the magnitude and daring of Cassatt’s tunnels and terminal enterprise became apparent. The new tracks into the tunnels would cross the meadowlands of New Jersey on a high fill, pass through two tunnels blasted through the solid rock of the Bergen Portal, and then plunge steadily down, far below the glacial muck of the mile-wide Hudson, to emerge in Gotham fifty feet below street level into what promised to be a magnificent Pennsylvania Terminal in Manhattan at Thirty-second Street and Eighth Avenue. There the rails would fan out to accommodate twenty-eight tracks. The station itself would be one of the biggest structures in the world and modeled on the superb Gare du Quai D’Orsay. But the two tunnels would not stop at the station. They would continue on deep under the streets of Gotham, each tunnel now wide enough to hold two tracks as they traversed below West Thirty-first and Thirty-second streets. Nearing the East River they would plunge down again, becoming four separate tunnels, finally surfacing at Long Island City. By opening up rural New Jersey and Long Island, these tunnels would do more than any legislation to alleviate Gotham’s crowding and slums.