Museum free hours in NYC for fall/winter 2009/10

Museums, zoos, ice rinks, clubs open Thanksgiving Day

Met Opera lottery to offer free dress rehearsal tickets

Amtrak plans to offer free wi-fi on Acela trains by 2010

'Bye Bye Birdie' crashes into brutal Broadway reviews

Studio audience tix: SNL, Letterman, Martha, Colbert

Amy at newyorkology.com






Subscribe with Kindle
Subscribe with Bloglines
Add to My Yahoo!
Add to Google

Subscribe in NewsGator Online
Add to Technorati Favorites








December 28, 2004

Unearthing the legend of the 'secret subway'

By day, Joseph Brennan helps run the e-mail system for Columbia University. Afterhours, he's something of a history buff on the workings of the New York subway system, and has assembled great web resources about its abandoned stations and his own subway diagram.

Earlier this year he added a lengthy and beautifully illustrated section on the storied Beach Pneumatic subway -- the legendary "secret" subway built in the 1870 next to City Hall. While the station did indeed exist under Warren Street, Brennan learned a lot of the lore was suspect:

As I went through the newspaper reports and other documents, the story slowly fell apart. Half of Warren St was blocked with construction equipment and the newspapers wondered how far the tunnel ran— not exactly a secret. When I got to where ‘Boss’ Tweed tried to help Beach get a franchise, I knew I was on to something. The truth was out there and I started to wonder where the now-standard history came from. I found that too: from the inventor, entrepeneur and writer, Alfred E Beach himself.
(Link found via Live from the Third Rail.)

December 28, 2004 01:45 PM in Downtown, History, Transportology

Comments (0)

 

®Copyright 2006, All Rights Reserved

 


flights




NewYorkology is in the NYC blogs, travel blogs and food blogs networks at Blogads.