The Routes Not Taken Page 19

  McAdoo made numerous trips by ferry between the two states and thought about building a rail tunnel connecting them. In his autobiography, Crowded Years, he wrote about telling an associate, John Randolph Dos Passos,3 about this and being told about earlier attempts to connect the two states.

  DeWitt C. Haskins began work on the original project in the 1870s. He ran out of funds and encountered legal problems. A tunneling accident claimed twenty lives, and work ceased in 1882. Other attempts to restart the project were made without success. Dos Passos served as a director of the Hudson Terminal Railroad Company, another group trying to build the tunnel. Three thousand feet of one tunnel running toward Christopher Street in Greenwich Village had been built. When McAdoo told Dos Passos about his interest, Dos Passos responded, “Why not take hold of ours and build it?”4

  Figure 7-1. William Gibbs McAdoo. (Wikimedia Commons)

  Financing was found, and McAdoo began the work of completing a rapid transit line. The tunnels to Christopher Street opened on February 25, 1908; service to the Hudson Terminal in Lower Manhattan began on July 19, 1909. The line connecting the H&M’s lines in New Jersey opened on August 2, and the junction connecting the uptown and downtown tunnels opened on September 20. The H&M’s uptown line was extended to its terminal at 6th Avenue and East 33rd Street on March 10, 1910.5

  McAdoo wanted to do more. The uptown tunnel allowed for a branch line to be built to the East Side from the 9th Street station. He wanted to extend the H&M to the new Grand Central station. Even before H&M service to Lower Manhattan began in 1909, McAdoo considered the potential for connecting his line with the subway system at the Hudson Terminal.6 He saw other opportunities.

  The Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Corporation, and the New York State Public Service Commission were in a slow dance to expand the subway system. The PSC wanted to build. The IRT and BRT didn’t seem to be in a hurry, since they didn’t have competitors who would push them to move ahead.

  Now they did. As the H&M’s work in Manhattan approached completion in early 1910, McAdoo proposed expanding it. The PSC’s Tri-Borough Plan routes would be connected with the H&M’s lines. The uptown branch of the H&M would continue to Grand Central Terminal, connecting with the Tri-Borough Plan’s Broadway–Lexington Avenue line. A downtown connection would be developed at the Hudson Terminal.

  Figure 7-2. A map of McAdoo’s plan appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on November 19, 1910.

  PSC Chairman William R. Willcox saw potential in McAdoo’s proposal: “I have not had time to make a study of the proposition presented by Mr. McAdoo, but one thing is apparent and that is that a responsible company is ready to undertake the operation of the tri-borough system with certain minor modifications.”7 Mayor William Jay Gaynor didn’t comment on McAdoo’s proposal, but Aldermanic President John Purroy Mitchel and Comptroller William R. Prendergast saw it as a step forward.8 Brooklyn Borough President Alfred E. Steers had reservations; he wanted more details on the Broadway–Lafayette Avenue loop line.9

  McAdoo campaigned for the franchises, touring 4th Avenue in Brooklyn on November 23 to develop a plan for that line. In response to Borough President Steers’s concerns, he promised to return to study the Broadway–Lafayette Avenue line and other parts of Brooklyn.10

  McAdoo planned a second phase for what he called the “Independent Subway.” He wanted to extend the 4th Avenue line to Staten Island, continue the Broadway–Lafayette Avenue loop line to Queens via Lafayette, Bushwick, and Jamaica Avenues, and construct branch lines from the Eastern Parkway line to Jamaica Bay via Utica Avenue, to Sheepshead Bay via Nostrand Avenue, and to East New York via Livonia Avenue.11

  There was little response. McAdoo and Willcox met on December 13. Willcox stepped back from his praise of McAdoo’s plan, speaking of the benefits of a “regulated monopoly.”12 He was now leaning more toward new proposals that the IRT and BRT made in the wake of McAdoo’s plans.

  A frustrated McAdoo spoke at a City Club luncheon on December 3:

  The Public Service Commission of this district has developed some years to preparing a plan which would solve the subway problem in New York, not only for the present, but for a reasonable length of time in the future. I think the plan can be bettered in some respects, but I am frank to say also that you can appoint a hundred bodies of committees of engineers or of citizens and ask them to study the subway problem, and submit a plan, submit suggestions, and submit specifications and I will guarantee you that no two of them will be in accord as to the route or as to the specifications, or as to anything, but I think that the duly constituted authorities under the law are the people to make that plan and that plan is here, and you are at a point where you can do something with it unless you allow yourselves to be talked out of it, or allow the plan itself to be talked to death.13

  The H&M then withdrew its bid. “We have become convinced that it is futile for us to unite with the city authorities to provide an independent system unless the city authorities are fully determined that an independent system is wanted for the city,” McAdoo wrote to Willcox. “In short, there can be no competitive bids between this company and the Interborough on independence or monopoly. It seems to us essential that one policy or the other shall be decided upon before further progress can be made.”14

  Figure 7-3. This map showing McAdoo’s proposals for routes to be built as part of the IND appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on November 26, 1910.

  McAdoo spoke at the annual dinner of the trustees of Brooklyn Heights’ Plymouth Church on January 11, 1911: “The welfare of the people as a whole must, as it should, be the determining influence. The time has come when the real people must be considered. The views of civic bodies and interested persons must not be taken too seriously. The real people are the masses, who use the subways most, and it is their interest, because they are the most affected, which should have the most claim.… Once the City begins to construct the Independent System progress in every direction will be easier and it will be easy to secure better terms that the City ought to have.”15

  McAdoo then left the country for “health reasons.” He wouldn’t discuss anything after his return. The H&M didn’t withdraw its plans to extend to Grand Central until 1920, after seventeen separate proposals. The Board of Estimate, the PSC, and the Transit Construction Commission declined to grant permission, fearing the H&M would interfere with the extension of the Flushing line from Grand Central to Times Square.16 By then, McAdoo had left the H&M to become secretary of the treasury during Woodrow Wilson’s administration.17 After seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 1920 and 1924, he moved to California and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1932.18

  McAdoo’s efforts to operate subways did not succeed, but they probably did produce the results the PSC wanted. The IRT and BRT made offers to expand their systems. They were beginning to take the steps toward what would become the Dual Systems Contracts.

  Daniel Lawrence Turner’s concept of building subways ahead of population growth was most clearly seen in the proposals he drew up in the 1920s and 1930s; his influence, as exemplified by the ESA, is still felt. The plan he prepared for the Transit Construction Commission in 1920 proposed extending subway lines to the city line in Queens and the Bronx and to Staten Island’s western shore. Once Turner became the consulting engineer for the New York State Transit Commission (NYSTC), he tried to reach the suburbs.

  The NYSTC released Turner’s Queens Parkway plan, a proposal for a line into eastern Queens, in 1923. It was an east–west line running from 9th Avenue and West 23rd Street in Manhattan into Brooklyn, mostly operating along Greenpoint and Metropolitan Avenues, and into Queens along Penelope and Jewel Avenues and Black Stump Road (now 73rd Avenue) to near the city line. A further extension to the suburbs is easy to envision. Most of the line in Queens would be built in “open cut” style—below street level, but not in a tunnel. The line would be built with an adjoining parkway and parkland. What Turner had in
mind would look like Mosholu or Pelham Parkways in the Bronx with a subway between the main roadways.

  BRT lines in Brooklyn—parts of the Brighton Beach line and most of the Sea Beach line—were built this way, as were parts of the New York, Westchester, and Boston Railway. It reduced construction costs and was a reasonable alternative in constructing new lines. “Subways are prohibitive in cost, and elevated subways, while they develop a district eventually, are a blight,” Transit Commissioner LeRoy T. Harkness wrote. “The ideal method has seemed to be the depressed open cut such as the Brighton Beach line in Brooklyn. That line gives splendid service and normal building development continues on both sides right up to the banks of the open cut.”19

  Turner wanted to build the line in an open area, with residential and recreational areas developing around it. His view was not different from that of Nathan Straus, Jr., Clarence Stein, and Andrew J. Eken with the Bronx’s Hillside Houses:20 “In addition to providing the population with rapid transit, a parkway line also provides the same population with a park, just as conveniently accessible to them as the rapid transit line itself is accessible. In other words, a playground and breathing space for the children is provided at the front door of the homes. This great advantage can be obtained for the people, as will subsequently appear, at a very little cost over an elevated line, and at a very much less cost than a subway line through the same territory.”21

  Turner discussed the growth the Queens Parkway line would generate:

  Given rapid transit, the area east of Queens Boulevard alone, even if restricted to an average population of about 60 per acre gross, which would mean a suburban type of development, with for the most part one or two family dwellings, could house 300,000 people.… The area made accessible by these 12 miles of rapid transit in Queens, would therefore, under housing conditions are superior to those of people living the present rapid transit areas of the Bronx or Brooklyn, giving homes to half a million people.

  Even if a more intensive apartment house development were to result along practically the entire parkway line, the objections to such a type of development would be greatly minimized by reason of the fact that these apartments would have in front of their doors a parkway following the rapid transit line. In other words, simply by crossing the street, there would be ample playground and breathing space for the children.22

  The Queens Parkway line didn’t go beyond the proposal stage. Not long after, the Board of Transportation proposed its own east–west route, the IND’s Queens Boulevard line. However, other proposals creating new subway systems within Manhattan, radiating out through the other four boroughs and into New York City’s northern and eastern suburbs and New Jersey, followed.

  Figure 7-4. A rendering of the Queens Parkway line.

  Henry M. Brinckerhoff proposed a system serving the city and the suburbs. He was a partner with William Barclay Parsons in the company then known as Parsons, Klapp, Brinckerhoff, and Douglas. “Let us first free our minds of our habitual ideas of New York as Manhattan Island and think rather of the great surrounding district extending even outside of the five boroughs of Greater New York,” Brinckerhoff said in a paper presented at a meeting of the New York Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers on November 17, 1920.23 He called for east–west lines running from New Jersey through to Long Island, as well as lines running into the northern suburbs and a north–south line running from Staten Island to New Jersey’s northern counties.

  Daniel L. Turner spoke about his concept of having rapid transit precede population growth, which was not inconsistent with Brinckerhoff’s plan. George McAneny, who would become NYSTC chairperson, agreed with Brinckerhoff.24 At a Transit Commission hearing on May 24, 1922, McAneny and Turner discussed building a new suburban rail terminal at 4th Avenue (now Park Avenue South) between East 32nd and East 33rd Streets.25 He wanted to relieve overcrowding at Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal.

  Figure 7-5. This map of Brinckerhoff’s plan appeared in the December 11, 1920, edition of the New York Evening Post.

  In June 1922 Turner was appointed as the chairperson of a NYSTC staff committee tasked with planning for a system serving suburban riders and relieving overcrowding of the subway lines. Rather than developing one central terminal, the committee expanded on Brinckerhoff’s proposal. The Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) plan was released in April 1924.

  Two loop lines in Lower and Midtown Manhattan were the center of this system. One went under 57th Street on the north and Battery Park on the south. Along the West Side, it would go along Washington Street, West Broadway, Hudson Street, and a “super street” to be built between 9th and 10th Avenues. The East Side route would run along Front Street, the Bowery, and a “super street” to be built between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.

  Connections with the LIRR would be developed in Lower and Midtown Manhattan. A second, larger loop would establish connections to the New Jersey commuter lines. The East Side line would be extended to the Bronx, linking with the northern commuter lines at a station at 149th Street. Stations in the city would create additional rapid transit service for local riders.

  Figure 7-6. A map of the Metropolitan Transit System plan. (Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

  Turner estimated that the MTS would cost approximately $687 million to build ($18.9 billion in 2011 dollars, according to MeasuringWorth.com), with costs divided between the localities and railroads.26 No schedule was set for construction; Turner thought the project’s benefits were short-term and, accordingly, should be funded on a pay-as-you-go basis: “There will be many direct beneficiaries of the System, apart from the passengers who use it daily to and from work. All of these beneficiaries should share in the cost as well as the riders. Furthermore, the System will not serve more than the present generation. Later generations will have their own facilities to provide. Therefore, the System should be paid for now to the greatest extent possible, not passed on for those in the future to pay for.”27 Turner foresaw suburban sprawl in the New York metropolitan area well before anyone thought of the phenomenon or the expression describing it.

  Two other Transit Commissions drew up plans building on what Turner and his committee proposed. Henry M. Brinckerhoff, serving as consulting engineer for the Westchester County Transit Commission (WCTC), and John F. Agar, its chairperson, thought Westchester lines should not terminate at 149th Street. Brinckerhoff believed it was impractical due to the required transfers.28 He proposed continuing trains along Madison Avenue to Murray Hill as a “deep tunnel” line (similar to what the MTA is doing with the ESA). Some trains would terminate there; others would go on to a terminal at City Hall. Further extensions would connect with the LIRR in Brooklyn, the Central Railroad of New Jersey in Jersey City, and the SIRT in St. George via the New Jersey connection.

  Figure 7-7. The WCTC plan.

  Turner also went beyond the MTS. Serving as consulting engineer for the North Jersey Transit Commission (NJTC), along with having similar positions with the NYSTC and the BOT,29 he helped to develop an NJTC plan for a commuter subway system establishing direct links with the existing New York City subway system.

  The core of the NJTC plan was the Interstate Loop line, running north to south from Weehawken to Jersey City in New Jersey and Park Row, Mulberry Street, Lafayette Street, Irving Place, and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The northern leg would run along 57th Street; the southern leg would run along Washington and Barclay Streets. The Interstate Loop would be built as a “deep tunnel” line on the East Side. Fourteen stations would have been built in New Jersey, and nine would have been built in Manhattan. Turner estimated it would cost $185 million to build ($2.26 billion in 2009 dollars).30

  The NJTC also proposed extending New York City subway lines to New Jersey. Three routes were extensions of IRT lines and the fourth was from the BMT. Two of the IRT connections were links to the Lexington Avenue and Broadway–7th Avenue lines in the area of the Battery. The third was an extension of the Flushing line from its yet-to-open
Times Square terminal to Bergenline Avenue in New Durham. The report called for extending the BMT’s 14th Street–Canarsie line, yet to be built to its terminal at 8th Avenue, to Hoboken.31 A full rapid transit line was planned for northern New Jersey, taking advantage of the new river crossings expected to be built across the Hudson River.

  The NYSTC had started to examine extending the IRT to New Jersey when the NJTC report was released.32 Initially, focus was given to the connections at the Battery, but it would eventually be given to extending the Flushing line to New Durham. Laws authorizing that extension were discussed in the legislatures of both New York and New Jersey33 and had support from Midtown Manhattan business groups.34 The NJTC released a report on the feasibility of this route on June 1, 1927.

  The New Jersey Legislature passed the legislation, but the plan went no further. The $33 million cost ($837 million in 2011 dollars, according to MeasuringWorth.com) of building the extension may have been too much of a burden for both states, which first needed to respond to local priorities.

  The BMT opposed extending the 14th Street–Canarsie line to Hoboken. “If you would consider the merits of the proposed extensions, there is at present no need for an added feeder from the B.M.T. into New Jersey,” said BMT Vice President Travis H. Whitney. “But when we consider the rapid growth of Brooklyn and the almost stagnated expansion of the transportation facilities to match the increase in population, there is no doubt that B.M.T. extensions are better concentrated in this borough for the present.”35

  Figure 7-8. A cross-section of the WCTC “deep tunnel.”