The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway (51 page)

Even though Boston’s subway was America’s first, it has been largely ignored by historians and authors. Bradley Clarke and O. R. Cummings’s
Tremont Street Subway
is a thorough and detailed work. Stephen Puleo devotes a terrific chapter to the subway in his book,
A City So Grand
. And Brian Cudahy has written several books about Boston transit that explore its evolution. One of the most complete works of reporting on Boston’s subway was done by a graduate student. Asha Elizabeth Weinstein, in her 2002 dissertation for University of California, Berkeley, delved deeply into the subway debate in a four-hundred-page study titled “The Congestion Evil: Perceptions of Traffic Congestion in Boston in the 1890s and 1920s.” Her meticulous footnotes proved enormously valuable. And one book that covered the subway projects in both Boston and New York in particularly detailed fashion is Charles Cheape’s
Moving the Masses.

Just as the two cities have been covered so differently, the Whitney brothers have been treated unequally by historians. No doubt because of his political and familial connections, William Whitney became the more famous of the two. His papers have been collected at the Library of Congress, and they provide insight into his political decisions and his personal life. Mark Hirsch’s 1948 biography
William C. Whitney: Modern Warwick
is authoritative, comprehensive, and wonderfully written. Less comprehensive but also useful is
Whitney Father, Whitney Heiress,
by W. A. Swanberg. The early life of Henry Whitney is best captured by his family, in Josephine Whitney Duveneck’s
Life on Two Levels
. But his career really only comes to life in the pages of the
Boston Daily Globe
and the city’s other newspapers of the day, which covered one of Boston’s most important businessmen of the nineteenth century with detail and flair.

Finally, the transit commissions in both cities deserve credit for the papers they left behind. Without their lengthy and detailed reports in the 1890s and early 1900s, there would be no official record of how decisions were made or of the debates behind those decisions. The Internet is a wonderful thing. But the public libraries in Boston and New York are two of the finest libraries in the world, and without them, and their troves of archived materials, it’s frightening to imagine how much history would be lost.

NOTES

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INTRODUCTION: TWO CITIES, ONE CRISIS

“A menace to the health of the public”: “Against the Subway,”
Boston Daily Globe,
March 27, 1895.

“living in a tomb”: “Scooting Under Boston,”
Boston Daily Globe
, March 29, 1891.

He was short, stocky, nearly deaf: Josephine Whitney Duveneck,
Life on Two Levels: An Autobiography
(Trust for Hidden Villa, 1978), 19.

1: A SECRET SUBWAY

Crystal Palace was as much of an attraction as the inventions inside: “Burning of the Crystal Palace,”
New York Times,
October 6, 1858.

In 1867, its home was the Fourteenth Street armory: Clifton Hood,
722 Miles
(The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 44.

Alfred Ely Beach was born into a prestigious family: Joseph Brennan,
Beach Pneumatic: Alfred Beach’s Pneumatic Subway and the Beginnings of Rapid Transit in New York
(2004–05), 122–23; Hood,
722 Miles,
43; Martin W. Sandler,
Secret Subway
(National Geographic Society, 2009); Benson Bobrick,
Labyrinths of Iron
(Henry Holt, 1986), 169–93.

the two of them paid $800:
Scientific American
Web site, Company History,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/pressroom/aboutus.cfm
.

The patent business earned Beach a fortune: Sandler,
Secret Subway,
24.

That’s when Abraham Brower saw an opportunity: John Anderson Miller,
Fares, Please
(Dover Publications, 1941), 1–3.

The vehicle, which he called
Accommodation
: Brian J. Cudahy,
Cash, Tokens and Transfers
(Fordham University Press, 1982), 8.

“Bedlam on wheels”:
New York Herald,
October 8, 1864.

“This event will go down in the history of our country”: New York City Transit, “Facts and Figures” (Public Affairs Department, New York City Transit Authority, 1979), 3.

“You must button your coat tight about you”: Francois Weil,
A History of New York
(Columbia University Press, 2004), 103.

On the chopped-up streets, garbage and debris: Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr,
The Horse in the City
(The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 26, 121.

“We can travel from New York half-way to Philadelphia”: Bobrick,
Labyrinths of Iron,
171.

“Nothing less than a railway underneath, instead of one above”: Alfred Ely Beach, “An Underground Railroad in Broadway,”
Scientific American,
November 3, 1849.

“It’s better to wait for the Devil than to make roads down into hell”: Christian Wolmar,
The Subterranean Railway
(Atlantic Books, 2004), 33.

Rammell and Clark story: Sandler,
Secret Subway,
31.

“We feel tolerably certain”:
Mechanics’ Magazine,
September 1864.

“Ladies and gentlemen”:
New York Times,
September 13, 1867.

“swift as Aeolus (god of Breezes) and silent as Somnus”: Bobrick,
Labyrinths of Iron,
84.

“The most novel and attractive feature”:
Scientific American,
October 19, 1867.

“A tube, a car, a revolving fan!”: Alfred E. Beach,
The Pneumatic Dispatch
(The American News Company, 1868), 5.

“Passengers by a through city tube”:
New York Times,
September 16, 1867.

William Magear “Boss” Tweed Jr. ran the most corrupt political machine in the country:
The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography
; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(Oxford University Press, 1999); David Black,
The King of Fifth Avenue: The Fortunes of August Belmont
(Dial Press, 1981).

Devlin’s clothing store: Brennan,
Beach Pneumatic
, chapter 6.

“As the street in which the company”:
New York Times,
January 4, 1870.

“In reference to the ridiculous stories”:
New York Times,
January 8, 1870.

Western Tornado: Brennan,
Beach Pneumatic
, chapter 6.

“The problem of tunneling Broadway”:
Evening Mail,
February 27, 1870.

“Certainly the most novel, if not the most successful”:
New York Times,
February 27, 1870.

One woman later described her ride as “most delightful”: Brennan,
Beach Pneumatic,
chapter 6.

“We took our seats in the pretty car”: Ibid.

“Next to the air we breathe”: “The Great Need, a City Railroad as a City Work,” an address to property holders and the people, 1873.

2: WHERE SPIRITS, THE DEVIL, AND THE DEAD LIVE

Deep inside the earth: Rosalind Williams,
Notes on the Underground
(MIT Press, 2008), 9–11.

“the first truly atrocious Hell”: Ibid., 9.

Sticks, rocks, picks: Don Murray,
Man Against Earth
(J. P. Lippincott, 1961), 16–23.

It must have been a terrifying experience: Ibid., 28.

“We have seen you invading our soil”: Neil Swidey, “New York vs. Boston: The End Game,”
Boston Globe Magazine,
July 8, 2012.

It had to be the strangest dinner party ever thrown: Bobrick,
Labyrinths of Iron,
65.

Almost from the day he was born in 1769: Richard Beamish,
Memoir of the Life of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel
(Longman, Green, Longman and Robert, 1862), 1.

“Having borrowed a passport”: Ibid., 20.

“forming tunnels or drift-ways”: Ibid., 159.

“If I see honourable and personal employment here”: Ibid., 172.

“My affectionate wife”: Ibid., 174.

“preparing plans for the service of the British government”: Ibid., 175.

The Brunel shield was an amazing machine: Ibid., 219–25.

“The water came on in a great wave”: Ibid., 246–47.

“The water is in!”: Ibid., 261.

“Ball! Ball! Collins! Collins!”: Ibid., 260–62.

“The ground was always made to the plan.”: Celia Brunel,
The Brunels, Father and Son
, (Cobden-Sanderson, 1938), 69.

“Another wonder has been added”: “Opening of the Thames Tunnel,”
Court Magazine and Monthly Critic,
April 1841, 108.

For the opening ceremony, a “tunnel waltz” was composed: Bobrick,
Labyrinths of Iron,
71.

“The majority of the visitors went the whole distance, 1200 feet”: “The Thames Tunnel,”
London Times,
March 27, 1841.

3: A FAMILY FOR THE AGES

On May 6, 1635, John Whitney and his wife: Mark D. Hirsch,
William C. Whitney: Modern Warwick
(Archon Books, 1969), 2–3.

James Scollay Whitney was born on May 19, 1811: John William Denehy,
A History of Brookline, Massachusetts
(Brookline Press, 1906), 121–25.

Not even a year after they married: Frederick Clifton Pierce,
The Descendants of John Whitney, Who Came from London, England, to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1635
(W. B. Conkey, 1895), 514–21.

Shepard & Whitney established itself: From the private writings of Josephine Whitney Duveneck, Henry Whitney’s youngest daughter, courtesy of the family’s descendants.

The boy was not even ten years old: Ibid.

William was called Deacon: Hirsch,
Modern Warwick,
6.

At Williston Academy, nobody was allowed to coast: Ibid., 9–10.

On July 30, 1863, speaking to his graduation class: Ibid., 17–18.

“The Drama closes”: Ibid., 18.

“It was too much bother to memorize so many words”: Ibid.

“My dear Bill”: Letter from Henry Whitney to Will Whitney, from the papers of William C. Whitney (WCW), Library of Congress, May 10, 1865.

“If there was anything in New York”: Letter from Henry Whitney to Will Whitney, from the papers of WCW, Library of Congress, June 13, 1865.

“His own means don’t amount to much”: Don MacGillivray, “Henry Melville Whitney Comes to Cape Breton: The Saga of a Gilded Age Entrepreneur,”
Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region,
vol. 9, no. 1, Autumn 1979, 48.

Edison befriended an inventor: David Kruh,
Always Something Doing: Boston’s Infamous Scollay Square
(Northeastern University Press, 1989), 35.

“unless you are willing to go in a packed omnibus that labors and plunges”: Mark Twain,
The Chicago of Europe: And Other Tales of Foreign Travel
(Sterling Publishing Co., 2009), 79.

“I am entirely satisfied”: Letter from William Whitney to H. B. Willson, from the papers of WCW, Library of Congress, September 11, 1867.

During a visit to the Fifth Avenue Hotel: Hirsch,
Modern Warwick,
36.

“they would fall in love with each other”: Ibid.

“How you looked I plainly recall”: Undated letter from William Whitney to Flora Payne, from the papers of WCW, Library of Congress.

“The carriage would undoubtedly be a vast ornament to us”: Letter from Flora Payne to Will Whitney, from the papers of WCW, Library of Congress, December 1868.

They married at Cleveland’s First Presbyterian Church: Hirsch,
Modern Warwick,
47–48.

“You have got a sweet, good wife”: Ibid., 48.

In 1871, the street railways of Boston carried 34 million passengers: “Rapid Transit Plans in Boston,”
Street Railway Journal,
January 1892.

In the fall of 1878: From the private writings of Josephine Whitney Duveneck.

impressive salary of $15,000 a year: Hirsch,
Modern Warwick,
94.

clean up nearly four thousand pending suits against the city: Ibid., 95.

A close observer of Henry Whitney’s: MacGillivray, “Henry Melville Whitney Comes to Cape Breton,” 48.

“The car that was left behind would then fall back”: Prentiss Cummings,
Street Railway System of Boston
(Professional and Industrial History of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1894), 292.

He was on his way toward investing more than $800,000: Barbara J. Sproat, “Boston Studies in Urban Political Economy, Henry Whitney’s Streetcar Suburb, Beacon Street, Brookline, 1870–1910,” (working paper, no date, c. 1973), 4.

On August 9, 1886: Legislative Committee on Roads and Bridges,
Beacon Street, Its Improvement in Brookline by Connection with Commonwealth Avenue
(Chronicle Press, 1887), 3.

He described Olmsted as “a man who stands second to none”:
Brookline, Allston-Brighton and the Renewal of Boston
(History Press, 2010), 26.

He gave the town 630,000 square feet of his own land: Sproat, “Boston Studies in Urban Political Economy,” 6.

But when Oliver Payne: Hirsch,
Modern Warwick,
145.

On a February morning in 1882, William Whitney was driving his carriage: Ibid., 178.

On Monday, November 6, 1882: Ibid.

“I am exceedingly anxious”: Ibid.

“Frankly I think there is no more chance of his being nominated for governor”: Edwin Hoyt,
The Whitneys
:
An Informal Portrait, 1635–1975
(Weybright and Talley, 1976)
,
133.

“There is nothing prettier in the world”: Letter from William Whitney to Flora Whitney, from the papers of WCW, Library of Congress, May 27, 1883.