The City Beneath the City

On October 27, 1904, the New York City subway opened with a single line running from City Hall to 145th Street. Mayor George McClellan was so eager to drive the inaugural train that he refused to hand over the controls, piloting the car himself at dangerous speeds while officials gripped their seats. It was the most New York possible beginning for what would become the most New York possible system.

The subway was not the first underground railway. London's Metropolitan Railway had been running since 1863. But New York's system was designed for a different kind of city -- denser, more vertical, growing faster than its streets could handle. By 1904, Manhattan's surface was gridlocked with horse-drawn carriages, electric trolleys, and pedestrians. Moving people underground was the only way to keep the city functioning.

new york city subway. source: wikimedia commons

The first line carried 150,000 passengers on opening day. Within a year, ridership reached a million per day. The subway enabled New York to expand vertically and horizontally at the same time -- skyscrapers above, trains below. It connected boroughs that had been functionally separate. Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx became commutable. The subway did not just transport people. It remade the city's geography.

The system was built fast and cheap by today's standards, using cut-and-cover construction that tore up streets but worked. August Belmont Jr.'s Interborough Rapid Transit Company financed and operated the initial line. The fare was five cents -- a price that held for 44 years. Today the system carries over 3 million riders daily across 472 stations. October 27, 1904, is the day New York went underground. The city that never sleeps got the transit system it deserved: brilliant, chaotic, indispensable, and perpetually falling apart.