BronxRoots-L Archives

From: Mike <>
Subject: Birth of a subway...
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 08:21:57 -0600

NEW YORK TIMES
February 25, 2003

Sandhogs, Blind Mules and the Birth of a Subway

By RANDY KENNEDY

On this date a century ago, New York City was still a metropolis
without a subway. But
considerable evidence suggested that one was very, very near, and that
it was trying hard to
devour the city it was designed to help. For example:

Mansions on Park Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets were sinking into
the earth, and their
facades threatened to collapse.

According to an account in this newspaper, inspectors tried to assure
residents that the situation posed
no real danger, unless, of course, they "should chance to be standing in
front of their homes at the
time."

But property was not the only thing being swallowed. So were people and
animals, at an alarming rate.
In the fall of 1902, one Charles F. Allaire, Civil War veteran,
accidentally rode his bicycle into an open
subway tunnel at Amsterdam Avenue and 65th Street, breaking his right
leg. Edward Morris drove a
whole car in, at Broadway and 43rd Street. And several months later a
runaway black gelding paid the
ultimate price to the machine age: he galloped into the subway in
Harlem, broke his forelegs and was
put down with a police officer's pistol.

With the centennial of the subway approaching — the first passengers
boarded on Oct. 27, 1904 — it
seemed a good time to begin a close reading of the news leading up to
that momentous day. And if
events from a century ago show anything clearly, it is that our urban
forebears suffered greatly for the
sake of the mass transit we have inherited.

In fact, if the movie "Gangs of New York" tells how the city was born in
the streets, stories of the
subway's construction tell how the modern city was really born beneath
them, with great, strange and
sometimes deadly labor pains.

They tell about lakes of quicksand beneath Chinatown and "rotten rock"
under Park Avenue. They tell
about the unearthing of cedar water pipes and old cannons and ancient
skulls, one, according to The
Times, with "two full rows of teeth that looked as though they never
knew an ache." They tell about a
procession of lawsuits and accidents and angry strikes so great they
would have doomed most major
projects.

But they also tell of great sacrifice. How, for example, in an era
before dump trucks and bulldozers,
much of the work was done by pack mules lowered into tunnels in 1900
when digging began and not
brought out again until it was finished — many of them going blind in
the interim. An article in the
winter of 1903 described one such valiant mule, sometimes called Jim by
the workers.

"For the last year," the article said, "Jim has never opened his eyes,
not even when a blast of dynamite
was exploded in his vicinity. And although he must be as blind as a bat
to all intents, his drivers say he
never makes a misstep."

Some of the tunnel workers did not fare so well: one hallucinated a
fire-breathing dog; another quit
because he thought he saw a tiger in the tunnels.

The articles tell of some very bad luck, too, personified mostly in Maj.
Ira A. Shaler, who earned the
nickname the "hoodoo contractor" after a dynamite accident and later a
tunnel collapse on his watch in
1902 killed five people, wrecked the Murray Hill Hotel and began to sink
several art-filled Park
Avenue mansions.

That same year, during a tunnel inspection with the chief subway
engineer, the major stepped a few
inches in the wrong direction and was crushed by a falling boulder.

Most of the misfortunes of subway building were much more mundane. For
example, workers had to
wade through sewers and contend with man-size icicles dangling from
boulders. They had to untangle
such a mess of iron and clay beneath 23rd Street that one engineer
surmised that more money had
been spent on utility pipes there "than under any other thoroughfare in
New York, or in the United
States for that matter."

Of course, none of the stories go so far as to suggest that New Yorkers,
being New Yorkers even
then, took ruined streets and gas leaks and collapses and blasts and
fires and rat infestations with
anything nearly approaching good grace.

It was a city, after all, that while part Dodge City — murderous gangs
still roamed Kips Bay,
commandeering businesses and attacking police officers — was trying very
hard to calm down and
clean up.

The offices of The Times were flooded with angry subway complaints for
years, mounting as the work
dragged on.

One 1902 article, summarizing, said the public was finally "beginning to
ask if, in their case, patience
does not cease to be a virtue."

One night, guests at the Waldorf-Astoria decided this question for
themselves. Awakened by "such a
clatter and racket that it was impossible to sleep or have any peace of
mind," they complained angrily
to the manager, who complained angrily to the Board of Health, which
decided to order the
suspension of the work.

Somehow, the subway was finished anyway. But by that point, even its
workers had stopped trying to
bet on when. "Anyone who tries to say exactly when this work will be
finished," one mining foreman
said, "is a blamed fool. There's no telling."

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