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—— ON THIS DAY ——
OCTOBER 27, 1904
New York City, USA
122 years ago
The New York City Subway, whose first underground line, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, opened to the public on October 27, 1904.
At half past two on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, after speeches at City Hall, Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. descended to a gleaming new station beneath City Hall Park, accepted a ceremonial silver controller handle made by Tiffany, and started the first official train of the New York subway. He was meant to hand over to the motorman after a few moments. Enjoying himself, he stayed at the controls all the way to 103rd Street, with a carload of nervous dignitaries behind him and the company's general manager hovering at his elbow.
The line ran 9.1 miles from City Hall up the East Side to Grand Central, across 42nd Street to Times Square, and up Broadway to 145th Street, with twenty-eight stations. At seven that evening the doors opened to the public. The fare was five cents. Around 150,000 people rode before the night was out, many of them simply traveling back and forth for the thrill. Within days, newspapers were reporting the first subway pickpocket and the first complaints about crowding.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the private operator financed by the banker August Belmont Jr. that built and ran New York's first subway under contract with the city.
New York was late. London had opened the first underground railway in 1863, and Budapest, Glasgow, Boston, and Paris all had subways before 1904. But no city needed one more. Lower Manhattan contained some of the most densely packed neighborhoods on Earth, with parts of the Lower East Side packed at densities of several hundred thousand people per square mile. The elevated railways that ran above the avenues were slow, noisy, and dirty, and the streets below were choked with horse-drawn traffic. The Great Blizzard of 1888, which paralyzed the city for days, strengthened the case for moving transit underground.
The city paid for construction and owned the tunnels, while Belmont's company built and operated the line. The chief engineer, William Barclay Parsons, chose to dig shallow trenches along the streets, lay the tracks, and roof them over, a method known as cut and cover, rather than bore deep tunnels as London had. Some 7,700 laborers, many of them Italian and Irish immigrants, did the work in four years, blasting through Manhattan's hard schist and threading the line between building foundations and sewers. Parsons also insisted on four tracks, so that express trains could pass locals, which remains a distinctive feature of the New York system.
The subway's promise was captured in a slogan: City Hall to Harlem in fifteen minutes. It took a little longer in practice, but the effect was the same. Families poured out of the tenements into new apartment buildings in upper Manhattan, the Bronx, and later Brooklyn and Queens, wherever the lines reached. The population of the Bronx roughly doubled within a decade. The nickel fare became so politically sacred that it lasted until 1948. Today the system has 472 stations, runs around the clock, and carries several million riders on a typical weekday. The original City Hall station, with its vaulted tile ceilings and skylights, closed in 1945 because its curved platform could not fit longer trains. Passengers who stay aboard the downtown 6 train as it loops around can still glimpse it through the windows.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
The subway made modern New York possible. By letting people live miles from where they worked, it relieved the dangerous overcrowding of lower Manhattan and allowed the city to grow into the outer boroughs. The skyscraper district depends on it to deliver its workforce.
It set a pattern for public and private partnership in infrastructure. City ownership with private operation was a compromise that got the line built, and the later struggles over fares, profits, and public takeover in 1940 foreshadowed debates about transit funding that continue today.
It remains one of the great engineering systems of the world. With more stations than any other metro and continuous service since 1904, the subway is an aging but essential machine, and its condition is a constant measure of the city's health.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On October 27, 1904, the mayor of New York took the controls of a subway train for a photo opportunity and would not let go until 103rd Street. That evening 150,000 New Yorkers paid a nickel to ride under their own streets. Within a generation the city had spread across four boroughs along the lines the trains had drawn.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“City Hall to Harlem in fifteen minutes.”
— Popular slogan promoting the first New York subway line, 1904
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the opening of the New York City subway, Mayor McClellan's joyride, the cut and cover method, the five-cent fare, and how the subway reshaped the city?
