‐ [Narrator] It’s the transportation backbone
of almost 200 cities around the world,
covering over 11,000 miles
and carrying nearly 170 million people every day.
But 150 years, ago the subway is a pipe dream.
‐ He was laughed at.
He was mocked. He was ridiculed.
People thought it was a joke.
‐ To dig a tunnel underneath the streets of New York
in 1869 almost boggles the mind.
‐ [Narrator] As rival engineers search for solutions.
‐ If he can apply electrical power
to a rapid transit system,
this could bring millions.
‐ [Narrator] Boston and New York race to be first.
‐ Anyone who wanted to build anything big in New York City
he had to grease the right palms.
‐ Let’s do this.
‐ New York shouldn’t be following Boston.
‐ [Narrator] Victory won’t come easy.
‐ Blowing up dynamite underground
did not come without death and disaster.
‐ It was an extremely violent event.
‐ [Narrator] And when the dust settles,
the American city will never be the same.
‐ History is full of the ideas
that started out seeming radical.
‐ To hell we go!
‐ And then go to being indispensable.
‐ Start her up!
‐ [Narrator] This is "Subway Wars."
(dramatic electronic music)
‐ [Narrator] In the mid 1800s,
American cities are quickly becoming overcrowded,
fueled by a massive wave of immigrants
in search of a better life.
‐ In the aftermath of the Irish Potato Famine
and the German revolutions of the 1840s,
American immigration population explodes
and reaches four times its previous rate by 1850.
Most immigrants tend to arrive
in the major cities of the East Coast.
‐ But cities like Boston or New York
were never designed to be as large as they were becoming
in the 1830s and ’40s.
They’re essentially hemmed in by the ocean
or by the rivers that formed them.
They had nowhere to expand.
‐ [Narrator] By the late 1840s,
New York has become one
of the most densely populated cities on Earth,
with over 65,000 people per square mile,
more than double that of today.
‐ These cities were almost impossible to move around in.
It was extremely difficult
to get from point A to point B.
‐ We have not just pedestrians,
but horses, carriages, and pushcarts.
So all of these things are sharing the road.
And you have to also imagine that it’s very dirty.
‐ [Narrator] Wealthy New Yorkers can afford
to spend five cents on horse‐drawn streetcars
to move around the city.
But the majority of people must walk,
among the 2 1/2 million pounds of manure
and 60,000 gallons of urine left behind every day.
‐ There’s a story that a guy stood on a corner one day,
and in the span of a day,
he counted 8,000 horses
at this particular intersection.
You’re seeing this human and horse gridlock.
‐ It became clear that something new
was needed for a lot of people
to be able to move across a metropolitan area.
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] After years of living
through the daily grind of walking to his office,
a 23‐year‐old magazine editor
becomes obsessed with finding a better way.
(carriages rattling)
‐ Alfred Beach bought this tiny little magazine
called "Scientific American,"
and he built it into this very important journal
that was mostly about who was inventing what
and what patents were being issued.
This is a period when America was invention crazy.
Everybody wanted to be an inventor.
‐ He’s an innovator and a tinkerer.
He’s trying to make a name for himself,
and he’s somebody who’s actually trying to do that
and make a difference at the same time.
‐ When he looks at how people get around in New York,
he sees chopped up streets
and sort of a mess of a sidewalk
and that’s what sparks his idea.
(tense music)
‐ [Narrator] Beach decides to write an editorial
in his own magazine proposing an unheard of concept,
move thousands of people by rail
beneath the city streets.
‐ It’s just such a good way to use urban space.
By moving this challenging transit
underground out of sight, you allow the city
to have the kind of circulatory system it needs.
‐ [Narrator] But after Beach publishes his editorial
and the public reads about his revolutionary idea,
the response is not what he expects.
‐ "Mr. Beach has proposed the preposterous idea
of building a tunnel.
Broadway maybe helped, but why would we
descend into hell to alleviate our woes?"
‐ He was laughed at.
He was mocked. He was ridiculed.
People thought he was,
people thought it was a joke.
‐ At that time, underground,
underneath the surface of Earth,
that was where you put people who had passed away.
‐ Remember, this is the 1800s
and people are, with very much sincerity,
worried about, like,
"Are we going to be disrupting the spirits down there?"
It’s truly beyond what people can wrap their head around.
‐ [Narrator] The proposal goes nowhere,
and Beach returns to running his magazine.
But across the Atlantic Ocean,
(upbeat electronic music)
in one of Europe’s largest cities,
the first subway in the world opens to passengers,
the London Underground.
‐ On its very first day, 40,000 people take the subway.
This is proof of concept.
This shows that something that many people thought
could never be accomplished is a real thing.
‐ [Narrator] The system launches
with seven stations throughout Central London,
carrying almost 10 million people in its first year.
But while an impressive engineering achievement,
it has issues.
‐ The Underground was a coal‐powered steam engine
spewing black soot and smoke
and sparks into the air.
It was just a miserable experience,
people coughing, covering their mouths,
just not fun.
But we have to remember, it was the only option.
‐ [Narrator] The London Underground
reignites Alfred Beach’s dream for New York City,
inspiring him to work on a cleaner answer
to London’s coal‐driven engines,
a new innovative technology called pneumatics.
‐ Pneumatic technology harnesses the power
of pressurized air to be converted into mechanical work.
And that air pressure provides the propulsive force
to move the object.
‐ Beach is a born inventor,
and he hears they’re using an underground tube
in London to distribute the mail.
And he thought, "Well, hey,
if they’re using a pneumatic tube to move mail,
I wonder if we could use a pneumatic tube to move people?"
‐ [Narrator] Beach begins working on models
for a pneumatic‐powered train car.
‐ Okay, grab the street car and put it in the tube.
Switch it on.
(model rattling)
(Alfred laughing) (dramatic music)
(horse hooves clomping)
But to build the real thing,
he’ll need to convince the one man
who controls every construction project
in New York City, Boss Tweed.
‐ New York It is controlled by a political figure
known as William "Boss" Tweed.
Even though he’s not the mayor,
he’s not the head of the city council,
he essentially runs the city.
‐ Boss Tweed was at the center
of what we today call machine party politics.
He instigates this patronage system whereby,
in exchange for me giving you jobs or contracts,
you will kick off a little bit.
‐ [Narrator] Tweed gets a cut
from every fare passengers pay
for all the horse‐drawn carriage rides in the city.
So this idea of transportation
that potentially could take people
off of the carriages and down underground,
he sees that as a threat.
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] Knowing Tweed would never sign off
on an underground railway,
Beach comes up with a different approach.
‐ I can build a small, underground pneumatic tube
that can transport mail from City Hall
to the postal service building.
‐ Why are you suddenly interested in moving mail?
‐ So what Beach does is, he actually fibs a little bit,
that he’s gonna build a pneumatic mail moving system
just the right size to move
these little cars carrying mail sacks,
maybe about three feet four feet across.
‐ Moving mail underground will reduced the street traffic.
It will make your transportation system
more efficient and lucrative.
‐ Only four‐foot wide.
‐ Thank you sir.
‐ So what you have, really,
is sort of a David and Goliath here,
a matchup where you have this powerful,
corrupt politician against this sort of innocent,
but creative entrepreneurial inventor.
‐ [Narrator] Beach puts up $350,000
of his own personal fortune, over seven million today,
and begins building America’s first subway in secret.
Instead of a small mail tunnel,
it will be eight‐feet wide and 300‐feet long,
big enough to fit a train car.
Power will come from a 50‐ton fan
used to ventilate mine shafts.
‐ Beach thinks that, if he can perfect this,
the city will just approve
this network of underground tunnels
and Tweed will have to go along with it,
he’ll have no choice.
‐ [Narrator] But as the work continues
under the nose of Boss Tweed
and mere steps away from City Hall,
the danger of Beach’s secret being exposed
grows stronger every day.
‐ Beach has complete confidence in his own moral worth
and he goes ahead and does it.
‐ He’s got one shot.
And it’s a very high stakes endeavor for him.
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] In February 1870,
entrepreneur Alfred Beach completes work on his dream.
He finishes constructing his underground pneumatic train
in just 58 days.
‐ Sometimes, you gotta swing for the fences.
And I would argue that a 300‐foot tunnel
literally underneath sort of City Hall
on the way to the post office is pretty courageous.
‐ To hell we go!
Start her up!
(soft dramatic music) (wind whooshing)
‐ [Narrator] In March 1870,
Beach unveils his secret subway to the public.
In its first two week,
Beach sells the modern equivalent
of nearly $60,000 worth of tickets.
In a year 400,000 New Yorkers
take a ride on his pneumatic train.
‐ They’re just overwhelmed.
He would turn the fan on
and it would blow this car down the tracks,
and then he would reverse the fan
and it would suck the car back.
And it worked like a marvel.
‐ [Narrator] But it’s just a prototype.
Now, Beach wants a shot at building the real thing.
‐ [Doug] Beach is convinced that his technology
is really going to change New York City.
‐ [Narrator] Seizing on his momentum,
Beach proposes to Governor John Hoffman
a plan to build a five‐mile long,
pneumatic, underground rail line
from City Hall to Central Park.
‐ I estimate the cost to be around $5 million,
but with the current excitement,
we can raise the cash through private investments
without using any taxpayer money.
‐ [Narrator] But he has a powerful opponent.
‐ Boss Tweed says, "This is not gonna happen
as long as I’m here."
‐ [Narrator] Tweed rushes out
his own plan to the governor
for an above‐ground railway
in an effort to beat Beach for the bid.
‐ Boss Tweed’s proposal would have come in
at about 80 million,
but Tweed had an incentive to push it
because he would get kickbacks.
‐ What about Beach’s underground trains?
‐ My plan keeps us in business,
and your campaign funded.
‐ Boss Tweed essentially promised the governor that,
if he stuck by his side,
he could potentially be running
for president in four years.
And so Beach’s plan essentially dies
on the desk of the governor and never goes anywhere.
‐ [Narrator] Tweed’s plan is approved,
putting the brakes on Beach’s bold idea.
‐ There are two reasons why Beach’s pneumatic subway
is lost to history,
the one is, Tweed does his best to torpedo it,
but the second reason is, pneumatic power works
for delivering the mail and packages,
but it would have cost way too much in energy
to have a full‐fledged subway like this.
So it’s really not all that realistic or practical.
‐ It was sad, but in a lot of ways,
what he represented was New Yorkers’ hope
that there was a future beyond
what they were living at that point.
It was just going to have to come another day.
‐ [Narrator] Although Beach’s dream
may have hit a dead end in the United States,
underground travel is thriving across the pond.
By 1882, the coal‐fired steam engines
of the London Underground
have been operating for almost two decades,
carrying 40 million passengers each year.
(man coughs)
But despite these achievements,
a 25‐year‐old naval engineer
imagines a different future for underground travel,
an American named Frank Sprague.
‐ Frank Sprague is a really bright young man.
He is an engineer at heart.
He is someone who, very much like Alfred Beach,
loves to tinker, loves to work with his hands.
And when he was in London,
he got to ride on the London Underground.
He is struck by the fact
that it really moves people quickly,
but, "Gosh, this experience is miserable."
‐ He looks at The Underground railway,
he sees how filthy it is.
The smoke fills the passenger compartments, too.
‐ [Narrator] That’s when Sprague is struck
by a spark of inspiration.
‐ He couldn’t help but think,
"There has to be a better way
for trains underground to move."
He essentially decides that he is going
to turn his attention (horn beeps)
to developing an electric motor.
(engine chugging) (signal clanging)
‐ [Narrator] Only a few years
after Thomas Edison shocked the world
by perfecting the incandescent light bulb,
scientists and engineers are looking to go bigger.
‐ People are figuring out ways
to use electricity and applying it
to small and large motors as mechanisms
for powering our lives.
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] Sprague spends almost a year
working for Edison,
but unable to focus on his electric motor, he quits.
Sprague starts his own company in 1884
and pours his life into building an electric motor
that will revolutionize urban transportation
and solve a problem still plaguing New Yorkers
years after Alfred Beach saw the need for change.
‐ New York City has 100,000 horses
stomping on it streets every day,
and so it’s a great health hazard.
And if you told people that there’s a way
to replace those horses with a clean running motor,
it would be mind‐blowing, to say the very least.
‐ He spends the better part of three years
just tinkering and tinkering and tinkering.
His wife almost never sees him,
and, eventually, their marriage does fall apart
because he just can’t find a way
to balance his obsession with this motor
with anything else in his life.
‐ Okay, switch it on.
(motor humming) (motor rattling)
Let’s see how the motor copes with a few bumps.
(hammer bangs) (motor sizzles)
(soft dramatic music)
‐ The insides of that motor
are sensitive to a certain amount of jostling.
Too much vibration, you’re gonna lose electrical contact
and the motor will not function as intended.
(dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] But soon, Sprague cracks the code
using wheelbarrow suspension.
‐ Sprague’s solution is taking the electric motor
and mounting it directly to the wheel.
This creates a system that isolates the vibration
from the train and the wheel
and eliminates that problem.
The motor and the wheel work as one.
‐ [Narrator] Now, Sprague needs someone else to believe.
‐ He essentially needs what we know of today
as an angel investor,
somebody to sort of come along and say,
"I like what you have. I think it’s got promise.
I’m going to invest in your idea."
‐ [Narrator] Like Alfred Beach before him,
Sprague creates a test track,
this one in a New York alley,
200 feet long, with a flat car.
He invites the man who owns more railroad routes
than anyone else in America, tycoon Jay Gould.
‐ He is right up there with Cornelius Vanderbilt
and many other kinds of robber baron figures in the era.
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ I hope you brought your checkbook.
‐ In this moment, if Frank Sprague
is able to advance the interest
in electrical power to a trolley or a train,
this could bring him millions.
‐ Let’s get on with it.
(suspenseful music)
(engine chugging)
(lever clicks)
‐ The flat car starts to roll down the tracks,
and Sprague is undoubtedly thinking,
"This is going to work
and Jay Gould is going to give me money
and this is going to succeed."
(dramatic music)
(engine pops and sizzles)
(soft dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] After three years of effort,
Frank Sprague is showing investor Jay Gould
his new electric motor.
‐ Sprague pushes a lever forward,
the car starts to move.
It looks like it’s gonna be a successful demonstration.
(dramatic music)
And all of a sudden, sparks fly out
from right where Jay Gould is standing.
(engine pops and sizzles)
(soft tense music)
‐ At this point, Sprague is in big trouble.
He’s just driven away the number one railroad guy
in the country and he doesn’t have any customers
for his breakthrough electric motor.
‐ [Narrator] But New York is in desperate need
of new transportation
as traveling through city streets becomes unbearable.
‐ People today have no idea
how challenging and unpleasant, really,
it would have been to get around a city
like New York in the mid 19th century.
Everything was moved by horses.
There was manure everywhere.
And sometimes the streets were a foot deep
in horse manure.
Animals would die and just be left where they lay.
‐ [Narrator] The unsanitary conditions lead to disease.
Thousands die in earlier outbreaks
of cholera and typhoid.
Dirty city streets means the threat
of another outbreak continues with each passing day.
‐ The city doesn’t really have
a very good sanitation system by any measure,
so there’s a big public health crisis that looms
with so many people and so much waste on the streets.
‐ [Narrator] But while a working subway system
could help alleviate the filth left on city streets,
in 1886, New York is nowhere near building one.
(soft dramatic music)
Meanwhile, 200 miles to the north,
another city has its eyes on a safer,
more sanitary future and seizes the opportunity.
‐ In the late 1800s, New York City was, by far,
the biggest city in America.
Boston, at the time, was arguably the sixth biggest city.
But an investor, a man named Henry Whitney,
had become sort of the big player in Boston.
‐ He ends up owning the largest single‐street railway system
in the world, over 225 miles of streetcar track.
Whitney has 1,600 horse cars
carrying 48 million people a year.
‐ [Narrator] So Whitney sets a meeting
with a young entrepreneur, Frank Sprague.
‐ I am ready for a bigger opportunity.
‐ And New York isn’t showing any interest?
‐ Henry Whitney sees what Sprague
has accomplished down there
and had ambitions to sort of put Boston on the map.
‐ Let’s do this.
(dramatic music)
(glasses clink)
‐ But the most daring and bold thing Whitney proposed
was, "I’m going to build a subway tunnel for you
under Boston Common."
The idea of a tunnel for trains in Boston
had never been dreamed of.
‐ Boston Common is the first piece of land
designated in colonial America for perpetual public use.
It was essentially sacred ground.
So there was a lot of controversy around it.
You had businesses that were worried
that, "If you dig up the street in front of my business,
no one’s gonna be able to come in.
I’m going to lose revenue."
‐ [Narrator] Despite that opposition,
Whitney and Sprague forge ahead.
(soft suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
Back in New York City, it’s a cataclysmic event
that ends any debate
about the need to build a subway.
‐ That comes in the form
of the Great White Hurricane in March of 1888.
‐ [Narrator] For two days,
a blizzard paralyzes the East Coast,
dumping up to 60 inches of snow
and producing drifts more than 50 feet high,
killing more than 400.
‐ The blizzard of 1888 ultimately buried the Northeast.
When it was over, cities recognized
that their transit systems were paralyzed.
‐ [Narrator] The snow storm
becomes a defining moment for New York.
City officials put together a transit commission.
And finally, in 1894, one man is put in charge
of building a subway for the largest city in America,
bringing to life the vision of Alfred Beach.
And like Beach,
35‐year‐old railroad engineer William Parsons
faces a monumental task.
‐ Parsons is from a New York family.
He is schooled both here and abroad.
He spends a good amount of time in Europe,
and he is intrigued by what is happening
in the larger world.
‐ In the course of his young career,
Parsons took on a number of railroad projects.
He was always thinking about something bigger
and better and grander.
And so, changing the New York transit system
would be as big a project as any
that he could take on.
‐ [Narrator] But almost immediately,
Parsons is caught in the slow‐moving gears
of the New York political machine.
‐ I’m honored that you chose me
to be your chief engineer.
But with all due respect,
I’m not sure why it’s taken so long to start building.
(dramatic music)
‐ It is almost impossible
to get a major infrastructure project done anywhere,
but in particular, New York.
It’s a massive bureaucracy.
It’s a massive undertaking.
‐ Right now, I’m betting that Boston starts before us.
And that should embarrass everyone in this room.
‐ [Narrator] While waiting for the official go‐ahead,
Parsons devises a plan
for an electrically powered system
from City Hall all the way up to Harlem.
But actually building it won’t be easy.
‐ The geology of New York City is complicated,
and it’s only being discovered
as the planning and surveys
for the subway take place.
‐ You’re essentially digging on an island,
on a giant rock.
And that rock is hard in some places,
softer in other places.
And one of the biggest challenges Parson faced
is figuring out how to dig a tunnel into a rock.
‐ [Narrator] Parsons finds the answer
in the same method used
to construct the transcontinental railroad
across the Sierra Nevadas in the West:
(explosion booms)
dynamite.
But his solution is wrought with danger.
‐ It was a risky, risky proposition
to blow up dynamite underneath a city street.
(dramatic music) (fire hisses)
(explosion)
(upbeat dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] As William Parsons waits
to get started in New York City,
on March 28th, 1895, Boston breaks ground
and becomes the first city in America
to build a subway.
Workers begin construction on a 1.3 mile line
under Boston Common between two stations,
with three more to come shortly thereafter.
Construction of the Boston subway
was mostly through former tidelands,
so most of the subway in Boston was dug by hand.
They had some primitive steam shovels,
but it really was laborers and horses and carts
moving dirt every day.
‐ [Narrator] It’s an advantage over New York.
Engineers aren’t blasting
over 100 feet deep through bedrock.
The majority of track will be laid
using a method called cut and cover.
‐ Starting from the surface, you excavate down
to the level that the subway is is going to be,
and then cover it with material
that people on the street can go over.
So it’s safer than digging a tunnel,
but more disruptive to the people on the surface.
‐ [Narrator] People above ground
aren’t the only ones unsettled
as digging begins in the sacred ground of Boston Common.
More than 900 bodies, dating to the colonial era,
are discovered and then reburied.
For the next two years,
construction moves forward at a rapid pace.
But as the first phase is within months of completion,
on March 4th, 1897,
local residents and businesses
complain of a smell in the air.
‐ What nobody knew is that, the night before,
a worker who had been underground nicked a pipe
and that pipe had caused a gas leak.
‐ [Narrator] The gas builds up for hours,
until the next day
when sparks from the wheels of two street cars
rounding the corner on Boylston Street
ignite hell on Earth.
(explosion booming) (glass shattering)
‐ Six people were killed,
at least two horses immediately incinerated.
There were three street cars that were demolished.
Windows were shattered for blocks in every direction.
It was an extremely violent event.
‐ [Narrator] After the explosion,
a weary public wonders
if the subway is a death trap.
‐ Even though the London subway
had been around for 30 plus years,
people still were not convinced
that underground travel was safe.
‐ Fingers were pointed everywhere.
People were livid.
They thought, "The subway construction caused this."
(upbeat dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] After six years of red tape and delays,
at the dawn of a new century,
construction begins on the New York City Subway.
Boston may have started first,
but New York’s will be much more ambitious.
Nearly 8,000 workers,
primarily immigrants and African Americans,
will build a subway system
almost three times the size of Boston’s.
‐ There would have been bragging rights to beat Boston.
The original subway, they start at City Hall,
they go up the east side of the island,
they cross over 42nd street and go up the west side
of Manhattan to 145 Street,
which is North Harlem and Washington Heights area.
‐ [Narrator] New York has rapidly grown
in the decades since Alfred Beach
first proposed a subway from City Hall to Central Park.
As the population moves further away from downtown
to escape overcrowding,
the city plans the subway route
to make it possible for people
to now travel to their jobs
miles away from their homes.
‐ This transportation system
is now spreading its tentacles
out into the other parts of the city
to allow people to live in a nice little home,
yet jump on that subway
and zip their way into their place of work.
‐ [Narrator] With the advent of electricity,
for the first time in history,
that work can be 24 hours a day.
The need to efficiently move people
to and from their jobs at any time
makes the subway imperative.
‐ Electricity had a major impact
on the way Americans lived,
primarily by erasing nighttime.
Factories can operate around the clock
if they want to now,
because you can light up the workplace.
‐ [Narrator] And what sets New York subway apart
from any other in the world:
it will provide 24‐hour‐a‐day service,
and a revolutionary idea by William Parsons.
‐ Parsons designs, intentionally, dual‐tracks,
local and express, both ways.
So this four track system
really is a game changer for mass transit.
(birds chirping) (soft suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] For Parsons,
building that system means using dynamite
in some popular and populated areas of the city.
‐ Murray Hill is our problem.
It’s home to Grand Central Terminal,
the Murray Hill Hotel,
and almost every millionaire in the city.
‐ Eh, you worry too much.
‐ But this is serious.
One bad blast could ruin New York City.
And look what happened in Boston.
(soft dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] Soon after blasting begins,
Parsons’ worst fear is realized.
‐ Dynamite for the project is being stored in a shed,
and somehow, accidentally,
a candle in the shed falls to the ground.
Someone comes running out of the shed
seconds before it blows up, yelling,
"Run for your life!"
And it’s devastating.
‐ [Narrator] More than 500 pounds
of dynamite are detonated.
The explosion levels buildings,
impacting nearly a half mile,
from 35th to 45th Street.
Six people are killed, and soon,
like Boston, the media begin pointing fingers
at the engineers tunneling beneath their city.
‐ Parsons said, "I can’t stomach this business anymore."
The project is taking such a toll on him,
he’s ready to be done.
‐ [Narrator] For William Parsons,
he disaster could be enough to end his career,
derailing his and New York City’s quest
to build their first subway system.
(dramatic music)
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] In the days after a devastating gas explosion
rocks downtown Boston, many wonder if the tragedy
also means the death of the subway.
‐ The city of Boston had to work hard
to convince people that this accident
was just that, just an accident caused by a gas leak.
There was nothing else to worry about.
‐ In the end, the investigations
didn’t really put the blame on the subway system.
They were close to being done,
and the work went on.
‐ [Narrator] Six months later, by December 1st, 1897,
construction is complete,
and Frank Sprague’s electric motor
helps Boston claim the title
of America’s first subway.
(dramatic inspirational music)
Over 100,000 passengers climb onboard opening day,
and more than 50 million in its first year.
‐ The opening of the Boston subway in 1897
sent ripples across public transportation forever.
New York and Paris still didn’t even have a subway system.
‐ [Narrator] But Boston isn’t finished yet.
Digging is underway
to add three more stations within a year.
‐ Boston is first, and they get to say
that they’re first for time immemorial,
but it’s also true that Boston is first
because theirs was a much more straightforward build.
It was a simpler construction.
It did not require as much engineering finesse
as New York’s did.
(soft suspenseful music)
‐ [Narrator] As the 20th century begins,
engineer William Parsons
faces challenges building the New York subway.
‐ A lot of attention is on him.
A lot of spotlight is being shown
directly on his work.
After having invested so much of his life,
he realizes that this project
is going to be his legacy,
for better or for worse.
And so, he’s determined to see it through to the end.
‐ [Narrator] The northern areas of Manhattan,
which used to be farmland,
are now booming with new residents.
In 20 years, the population will grow
from just 8,000 to 110,000 residents,
and they need transportation.
But as construction resumes,
Parsons faces his most daunting obstacle.
The last few miles of underground track to build there
are made up almost entirely of bedrock.
‐ Northern Manhattan requires
an entirely different construction technique
than most of the rest of the subway.
It is 180 feet below the street surface.
And the construction problems there are serious.
‐ It is very solid, it’s very difficult to get through.
Persons handles the challenge
of dealing with the bedrock in Washington Heights,
for better or for worse,
by blasting his way through it.
That’s the only way that this is going to happen.
‐ [Narrator] The tough bedrock will cause delays,
and Parsons’ bosses are getting impatient.
Only a few hundred feet remain
and the tunnel will be complete.
‐ The Board of Rapid Transit wants it done,
so the contractors are under pressure
to finish this part of the subway
as quickly as they can.
And so they are cutting corners,
sending workers in almost around the clock.
‐ [Narrator] But after the deadly explosion in Murray Hill,
William Parsons is still gun shy.
‐ What’s it looking like?
‐ Not good.
(hammers banging) (boards rattling)
(soft suspenseful music) (dirt clatters)
‐ Reinforce every timber frame,
and take no chances.
(soft dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] In order to hit the board’s deadlines,
crews are forced to pick up the pace,
blasting three times a day instead of two.
‐ With each blast of dynamite,
they were really taking their lives into their own hands
because they did not know how strong
and how stable the rock that was directly above them was.
‐ [Narrator] Then, on October 24th, 1903,
with only a few hundred feet of tunnel left to dig,
Manhattan’s unpredictable bedrock revolts.
‐ A crew of workers sets off a dynamite charge.
They sound the all clear,
meaning that it’s safe to come in
and clear out the loose rock.
‐ As they descended into the tunnel,
a huge rumble could be heard from above.
(eerie music)
(upbeat dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] Construction crews are racing
to dynamite 180 feet beneath the surface
through some of Manhattan’s hardest
and most unpredictable bedrock.
‐ What happens in 1903
is that the workers are on a speed up.
The contractors are pressing them
to finish their contract so the subway can be open.
‐ But after one particular blast,
the workers were a little hasty in going back in.
(dramatic music)
‐ [Narrator] Without warning,
a massive 300‐ton boulder comes crashing down
on more than a dozen men,
trapping them in a horrifying scene
of blood and chaos.
Ultimately, 10 men lose their lives.
‐ The Washington Heights cave‐in
would wind up being the worst single accident
in building the New York subway.
(soft tense music)
‐ It was really a tragic moment.
When Parsons showed up at the scene,
the feeling was you could almost sense him breaking.
‐ [Narrator] But being so close
to finishing the largest subway system in America,
Parsons knows he must carry on.
‐ Parsons had a calling for rapid transit,
and calling, I think, is an appropriate word,
because calling comes
from beyond the everyday world of work.
It’s from the world of religion.
It speaks to a higher purpose.
‐ [Narrator] Months later, the tunnels are complete.
‐ The New York subway was momentous
for a lot of reasons, the size, the scope,
the breadth of the project.
It was a really big deal,
dwarfing what Boston had opened.
‐ [Narrator] On October 27th, 1904,
four and a half years after breaking ground,
New York’s subway is finally unveiled.
When the turnstiles open to the public at 7:00 PM,
more than 100,000 New Yorkers
pour into stations across the city
for their first ride.
In a year, it will be over 100 million.
‐ The emergence of the subway
literally forever transforms New York City.
And what we saw in 1904
is how connected the city becomes
because of mass transit.
‐ [Narrator] After years of delays,
the city comes together
to create an engineering marvel.
At just over nine miles and 28 stations,
New York can now claim
it’s the largest subway system in America,
in large part thanks to William Parsons.
‐ I think it’s safe to say
that the New York City subway
cements William Parsons’ legacy
as perhaps the greatest engineer in the city’s history.
The subway was by far his greatest contribution.
‐ [Narrator] For the man who gave power
to Boston’s subway, Frank Sprague,
the electric motor cements his legacy.
‐ You think of Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone,
you think of Edison and the light bulb,
Frank J. Sprague is in that series
of innovators and inventors.
What Sprague’s invention of the electric motor does
is make high‐capacity,
high‐speed transportation possible.
The New York subway’s original prophet,
Alfred Beach, never sees his vision come to life.
He dies at age 69 of pneumonia
on New Year’s Day 1896,
four years before construction begins.
But in 1912, while workers are digging
a subway extension beneath lower Manhattan,
they rediscover his legacy.
‐ The construction company
is building a line right up Broadway,
which follows a lot of the same track
that the pneumatic subway did.
And they come upon the remnants of Beach’s line.
‐ They stumbled upon the original car
that Alford Beach had built
that still existed and still was sitting
down underneath the streets of New York.
‐ [Narrator] 150 years ago,
Beach’s revolutionary idea
of a railway beneath the city,
once dismissed as a joke,
is now an essential part of life
in 180 cities around the world,
speeding through the depths.
(upbeat music)
Today, the Boston subway
transports one million people a day
through 133 stations over 65 miles of routes,
while New York boasts 472 stations,
the most in the world, over 248 miles,
carrying over five million riders a day,
over 1.7 billion a year,
nearly 10% of the more than 20 billion people
who ride subways around the world every year.
‐ The idea of creating something like a subway
was audacious to begin with,
but if you add in the idea of doing it
under a city that was functioning
and bustling and vulnerable
makes it that much more ambitious and audacious.
What was achieved was extraordinary.