February 26, 1870: New York's 1st Subway

February 26, 1870, 150 years ago: New York City gets its 1st Subway system – and most people didn’t know it. Most people still don't know it.

London had developed the world's first urban underground railway in 1863, to relieve crowded street traffic. Clearly, New York already needed it. In 1869, a man named Alfred Ely Beach -- a 43-year-old member of the Yale family and the son of the publisher of the New York Sun newspaper -- was willing to spend his own money to build a subway system.

Imagine that: A rich man offering his own money for the public good, without asking the taxpayers to fund a vanity project for him.

William Tweed, the "Boss" of the City's Democratic political organization, Tammany Hall, who held more power than Mayor Abraham Oakey Hall, decided the project should not go forward. Why? Because it would take passengers off the elevated railways and horse-drawn carriages owned by the City, and thus controlled by Tweed, and thus costing Tweed money.

Beach built his subway in secret, anyway, with a tunneling shield, in just 58 days. The tunnel was 300 feet long, 8 feet in diameter, and run under Broadway from Warren Street to Murray Street. That's one whole block, with City Hall adjacent to the east.

City Hall is bordered by Broadway on the west, Chambers Street on the north, Centre Street on the east, and Park Row on the southeast. Just to the north, on the same grounds, with an address of 52 Chambers Street, is the "Tweed Courthouse," which Tweed had been building since 1861, and it still wasn't finished. The idea was, if construction was ever finished, Tweed couldn't keep skimming money off the costs. (Interestingly, the construction supervisor was Smith Ely Jr., a cousin of Alfred Ely Beach.)

Beach's line was built as a demonstration of a pneumatic transit system, open to the public with a 25-cent fare per person. (About $4.94 in 2020 money, or a little less than twice what the Subway costs now.) Proceeds for the admission went to the Union Home and School for Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans.

For the public, the project was used as an attraction. It ran only a single car on its one-block-long track to a dead-end at its terminus, and passengers would simply ride out and back, to see what the proposed subway might be like. During its first two weeks of operation, the Beach Pneumatic Transit sold over 11,000 rides, and over 400,000 total rides.

Tweed was arrested for his municipal excesses in 1871, and that halted construction. It was renewed in 1876, and finally finished in 1881. Tweed died in prison in 1878. In 1927, City court proceedings were moved to a new building. The Tweed Courthouse still stands, hosting municipal offices, but no court proceedings.

Beach planned his subway to run about 5 miles, to Central Park. But the Panic of 1873 and the ensuing depression made funding for further construction impossible. Both entrances were sealed. The City, free of Tweed's interference, did adopt a pneumatic mail system based on Beach's ideas, running it until 1953.

Beach continued investing in new technology, helping the innovations of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, and inventing he also invented a typewriter for the blind and a system for heating water with solar power. He, his son Frederick Converse Beach, and his son, Stanley Yale Beach, all served as the editor of Scientific American magazine. He died in 1896.

Beach did not live to see the 1st real New York Subway system, which opened in 1904. In 1912, the Beach system was discovered by tunnelers extending a line, with the car and the station's elaborate decorations intact. These items were donated to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Sadly, Cornell later reported that they had lost track of the items.

The Beach station was converted into the City Hall station on the R and W Trains. City Hall is also served by the Chambers Street stations on the J and Z Trains, and the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station on the 6 Train.

A remainder of the Beach line

Much is made of the original 1904 City Hall station that is intact, but used only on special occasions. But the Beach line is all but forgotten.