Scavenger Hunt: IRT

When people ask me how I like it here, my brain immediately responds "Yeah, it's okay here but I really miss New York".  Fortunately for everyone in the conversation, I actually say that I'm beginning to really enjoy living here. The weekends, the hiking, the wineries, the weather, blah blah blah. Honestly, though, I miss New York.  Sometimes it just hits me.  I see a photo from one of my NYC friends in Times Square, and I actually feel a small pull at my heart. What I miss the absolute most is not having to drive anywhere.  I feel like I've written about this before (too lazy to cross reference/ look up) or maybe it's just that Erik and I talk about the lack of a subway system every other day at the minimum. I'm actually going to look into ways to take public transit to work when I go back.  It'll take longer but at least I can be productive on the train with wifi.  Blogging time, anyone?

At any rate, it got me thinking about this week's NYC Scavenger Hunt post.  I thought it would be appropriate to write about NYC's first subway system, IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit Company). (Ch. 119)

The original idea for an underground railway system was formulated in 1870 based on Alfred Ely Beach's one-block "secret" pneumatic tube. (Ch. 119) By 1894, there was enough support for a metropolitan subway that the state legislature authorized a Board to oversee the best route and supervise construction. (Ch. 119) The IRT wasn't incorporated until 1902 and initially had a 50-year lease to run the trains. (Ch. 119) "Construction was difficult. The majority of the IRT's right-of-way lay along streets that already had sewer, electric, and telegraph wires buried beneath them." (Ch. 119) As an aside, NYC has a law that all public utilities must be buried under the street because of a blizzard in 1888 that "paralyzed" the city. (Ch. 119) All I can say is thank God. I can't imagine the terribleness that would have ensued after the snowpocalypse of 2010. (And as a further aside, I'm slightly traumatized that I took ZERO photos of that. What the heck, Meaghan?!)

Moving along, once all those sewer, electric, and telegraph wires were out of the way, the workers then had the fun task of tunneling through solid schist (and I'm sure they were thinking of a word that was missing the "c" and the second "s"). (Ch. 119) Their bosses decided that they wanted the original stations to be architecturally interesting and thus hired the same architects that built the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to design the original 28 stations. (Ch. 119) [I'll post on it another time but suffice to say that it is an amazing cathedral]. There are some architectural highlights mentioned in the book, but, unfortunately, I did not get a chance to see them because those were too deep a cut considering my time frame for completion.  Maybe on my next visit!

The IRT was such a great success that even today it follows the same basic layout.  (Ch. 119) What I found particularly interesting is that all the different lines were independently owned and actually competed against each other.  That ended in 1940 when all lines became municipally run. (Ch. 119)

This is part of the South Ferry subway station just inside Battery Park.  It's a 1905 structure and the oldest original shelter still in use (it was part of the original 28 IRT stations).

Part of the original path of the IRT. You could argue that it is credited with the success of the NY Times because Adolph Ochs, the publisher of the NY Times, was convinced to relocated his operations to a "new all-in-one editorial and printing plant along the path of the IRT" because he could get a jump on distribution since the subway was directly beneath his building! (Ch. 124)