Chapter 08. First Tunnel Built Under Broadway

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Fifty Years of Rapid Transit · James Blaine Walker

Chapter VIII

First Underground Charters and First Tunnel Built Under Broadway.

IN the Legislature of 1868 the scramble for rapid transit charters was resumed. In addition to the former applicants several new names appeared in a multitude of bills introduced. In one of these, which proposed to confer a grant for a road under Broadway to Madison Square and thence to the Harlem River, the names of the incorporators included those of Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, Horace Greeley, William G. Fargo, Peter B. Sweeney and Jacob Sharpe. The bill did not pass. The session produced a law, which led to the construction of the first passenger subway in New York City, but this experiment in underground transit, like the first elevated road, ended in failure. This was the so-called Beach tunnel built under Broadway at Murray street, the remnants of which were exhumed in 1912 when the Public Service Commission began work on the new Broadway subway. In the construction of the Beach tunnel a huge practical joke was played on Father Knickerbocker. The law passed by the Legislature of 1868 authorized certain men to form a company and to construct a "pneumatic dispatch" line under Broadway, to consist of two tubes each of 54 inches diameter, through which parcels etc. were to be transmitted by pneumatic power. Without official or public knowledge, however, the company actually built a tunnel nine feet in diameter, carried passengers in it without authority of law and excused the feat on the ground that it had to build one large tunnel to carry the two 54 inch tubes and since it was built desired to demonstrate the practicability of propelling passenger cars by the pneumatic method.

Beach Tunnel, 1870. (1) Interior Afer Years of Disuse; (2) Alfred Ely Beach, Inventor and Builder; (3) Ticket Issued in 1870; (4) Car Propelled by Air; (5) Shield Found in Tunnel in 1912.

Those authorized in the bill to form a company for the purpose of building the pneumatic tubes were: Alfred E. Beach, Robert G. Hatfield, Horace T. Caswell, Nathan Kellogg, Moses S. Beach, Salem H. Wales, R. H. McClellan, Julius H. Pratt, Frederick H. Betts, Charles H. Neill, Thomas Graham, T. G. Ford, John E. Ashe, John Leonard, J. Netto Burns, Charles H. Whiley and Samuel Marsh, Jr.

These men organized the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company, the articles of which were filed August 1, 1868. The capital stock was placed at $5,000,000 and the following were named as directors: Alfred E. Beach, Horace T. Caswell, Joseph Dixon, Moses S. Beach and Frederick H. Betts.

The Beach Pneumatic Railroad was the invention of Alfred Ely Beach, an engineer and editor of the Scientific American, who was a prominent figure in the life of New York City in the late 1860's and early 1870's. His son, Frederick C. Beach and his grandson (son of the latter) are today on the editorial staff of the same publication.

In the early 1860's pneumatic power was exploited in England, and in 1867 Alfred Ely Beach introduced it to New York. In that year he gave an exhibition of its possibilities at the American Institute, held in Armory Hall in Fourteenth street. There he erected a section of pneumatic tube in the main hall of the exposition, and in it by means of a blower he operated a car large enough to carry passengers. He also exhibited a smaller tube for the dispatch of letters and parcels by the same method. That it was then his intention to apply this principle to the transportation of passengers in the streets of New York City or under them is shown by a pamphlet he published in the fall of 1867. The pamphlet was entitled "The Pneumatic Dispatch, with Illustrations". In it he described the demonstration of pneumatic power at the American Institute. Here is a paragraph from it:

"The pneumatic system appears to be admirably adapted to the purposes of rapid city transit, since the ventilation is perfect and the freedom from all jarring and dust is complete. Mr. Beach is indefatigably laboring to accomplish its introduction here, and it is to be hoped his efforts will meet with due encouragement and reward. About 75,000 have already enjoyed the atmospheric ride, and it is expected that more than 100,000 will have passed through the tube before the close of the exhibition, about November 1. As soon as proper Legislative authority can be obtained it is proposed to lay down tubes under the principal streets and under the adjacent rivers, when, it is stated, passengers will be carried from City Hall, New York, to Madison Square in five minutes, Central Park in eight minutes, Harlem and Manhattanville in fourteen minutes, Washington Heights in twenty minutes, Jersey City or Hoboken in five minutes and City Hall, Brooklyn, in three minutes."

Under the authority conferred by the act of 1868 the company began work in that year, but so quietly was it done that the public remained in ignorance of it for many months. The first public announcement of it was made by the New York Times in January, 1869. This was supplemented by an article in the same paper of February 17, 1869, which said:

"Nearly a month ago the Times exclusively advised the public that a company of English capitalists, who had obtained a charter from the Legislature for that purpose, had commenced to construct a pneumatic dispatch tube in the lower part of the city for. the conveyance of parcels and letters and, it might be, passengers also. As then published, Mr. Moses Beach, president of the company, hired the basement of the Messrs. Devlin's store, corner of Broadway and Murray street, as a starting point for the line, with the intention of carrying it to the Nassau street post-office. The work of tunneling beneath Broadway then begun has been slowly but steadily progressing and will be pushed forward to completion as rapidly as possible. The details of these operations of the company have been carefully withheld by them from the public, in order to avoid the otherwise inevitable annoyance of injunctions from stage-line proprietors and property owners on the route."

As before stated the company decided to build two tubes at once, and to this end bored one large tunnel, in which it was proposed later to construct the two small tubes. In a pamphlet issued subsequently by the company it is explained:

"It is a portion of this outer tunnel which had been erected; and as it proved to be strong enough and large enough for the transit of passengers, the company laid down therein a railway track and provided a passenger car for the purpose of temporarily illustrating by an actual demonstration the feasibility of placing a railway under Broadway without disturbance of the street surface or injury to adjacent property."

The tunnel was 312 feet long and started on a curve from the west curb line of Broadway at Warren street and extended down the middle of Broadway to a point a little beyond the south line of Murray street. It was 21 feet beneath the surface, was painted white and lighted with gas. It consisted of a circular tube 9 feet in diameter, built of iron plates for about 60 feet on the curved portion and of brick masonry for the rest of the distance. It had been bored by means of a metallic shield, invented by Alfred Ely Beach, and this was the first application of the shield method of tunneling in America. This shield was pushed forward by means of hydraulic jacks as fast as the earth in front of it was excavated, when the bore behind it was immediately filled with a lining of brick masonry or iron plating. The work was carried on without opening the surface of Broadway, and few persons who walked over it daily knew what was going on beneath their feet.

Early in 1870 the tunnel was opened to the public and experimental operation was carried on. A circular car to fit the inner diameter of the tube was provided, large enough to hold twenty passengers. A huge blower or fan was installed at the end of the tube and the car was blown forward by force of the air. In February, 1870, a trial trip was made with the Mayor and other notables, and thereafter hundreds of citizens enjoyed the "atmospheric ride". Many persons now living recall the experience.

Thereafter no attempt was made to build the dispatch tubes, as the company bent every effort to get a franchise for a passenger railroad. The Legislature of 1871 passed such a bill, but it was vetoed by Governor Hoffman. The Legislature of 1872 re-passed the measure, but it again encountered the gubernatorial veto. In 1873 Governor John A. Dix succeeded Hoffman, and he approved a similar bill passed by the Legislature of that year. In this bill the company was authorized to build an underground road and to operate it with steam locomotives, the pneumatic method not having proved a success. By this time (1873) the new elevated railroad was already in successful operation, and the Beach company failed to raise the capital necessary to build the road. The franchise slumbered for a number of years and finally passed into the possession of the New York Parcel Dispatch Company.

The name and objects of the Beach company were changed by amendatory acts passed at different times. The act of 1873 gave the company the right to build and operate an underground railroad from Bowling Green up Broadway to Madison Square and thence up Madison Avenue to the Harlem River; also from Madison Square up Broadway to Central Park and Eighth Avenue. The act of 1874 changed the name to the Broadway Underground Railway Company. In January, 1885, by order of the Supreme Court, the name was changed to the New York Arcade Railway Company, and by a Legislative act of 1897 to the New York Parcel Dispatch Company, which is the present title.

As may be inferred from the foregoing, the company passed through much litigation. In 1870, when the knowledge of the construction of the tunnel under Broadway became public, the City of New York brought suit for an injunction on constitutional grounds. The courts upheld the act, refusing to grant an injunction. Many years later, when it was known as the New York Arcade Railway Company, it lost a much more important suit. This was the case of Astor and others against the New York Arcade Railway Company. The plaintiffs attacked the rights of the company to build a railroad for passenger transportation, and the courts held the act of 1873, which conferred such rights, unconstitutional by reason of a defective title. The original act of 1868, however, was upheld, and the company now claims only such rights as were granted by it-namely the rights to build and operate underground tubes for the transmission of letters, packages and merchandise.

The act of 1897 confirmed these rights, but limited their exercise to such streets as are not required for rapid transit roads unless the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners give their consent. This board was succeeded by the Public Service Commission, and in 1909 the New York Parcel Dispatch Company applied to that Commission for its consent to the building of tubes for the transportation of letters, packages and merchandise, or foil a freight subway as it was called, on such streets as the Commission should designate. No action was ever taken on the application. Three years later, when the Commission awarded the contract for the construction of the new Brooklyn subway in lower Broadway, the company, through its attorneys, Krauthoff, Harmon and Mathewson, filed this protest:

"NEW YORK CITY, February 19, 1912.

"To the New York Public Service Commission of the First District, to William R. Willcox, John E. Eustis, Milo R. Maltbie, J. Sergeant Cram, William McCarroll, and all whom it may concern:

"Notice is hereby given that the tunnel under Broadway from Warren Street southward about two hundred and ninety-four (294) feet in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, is the property of the New York Parcel Dispatch Company, that anyone molesting or interfering therewith will be proceeded against as a trespasser and that the rights of the owner will be enforced in the courts.

"(Signed) NEW YORK PARCEL DISPATCH COMPANY

"By Eugene W. Austin, President."

No attention was paid to the protest. The Commission had awarded the contract before it was received, and the contractor proceeded with the work, which involved the unearthing and destruction of the old tunnel. Parts of the old car, the rails and the boring shield were found, although the wooden parts were rotted away with their forty-two years entombment under Broadway. The metallic parts of the boring shield were fairly well preserved. The Commission offered the relic to Mr. Frederick C. Beach, editor of the Scientific American and son of the inventor. Mr. Beach looked over the shield, found that it could be restored and had it removed. He presented it to Cornell University as an interesting engineering relic. The University accepted it, took it to Ithaca and placed it on exhibition in the museum of Sibley College, where it can be seen today.

When opened the old tunnel was found to be in good condition. The brick walls had withstood leakage, and the air in the tube was dry and warm. The remaining wood work of the car was brittle with dry rot, and some of it fell apart when removed. Enough of it was saved to assemble in the office of the Public Service Commission almost the complete end of the car.

To return to the Legislative session of 1868, when as before stated a number of rapid transit bills were introduced. In the past most of the opposition to underground grants had arisen because such rights were sought in Broadway, the leading thoroughfare of the city, the property owners in which discountenanced any kind of a railroad therein. In 1868 a group of new applicants, believing in following the line of least resistance, asked for an underground grant in other streets. The result proved their wisdom, for the Legislature passed their bill, which was duly approved by Governor Fenton -- the same Governor who in 1865 vetoed the Willson underground bill for the Broadway route. The act of 1868, approved April 18, incorporated the New York City Central Underground Railroad Company, with a capital stock of $10,000,000 and the following incorporators: W. Butler Duncan, William B. Ogden, George Griswold, James Boorman Johnston, George D. Cragin, James M. Brown, William E. Dodge, Henry F. Vail, Lewis B. Brown, Edwin Dodge, S. W. Hopkins, Edward K. Bell, J. S. Thayer, Clarence S. Brown, Henry E. Davis, Julius F. Cheesboro, W. W. Huntington, D. M. Hildreth, J. S. Schultz, H. W. Slocum, Horace Deming, John Phillips, Everett H. Kimbark, Bryan Lawrence, Joseph Dixon, Eugene Bissell, Henry Marshall, Edwin J. McKee, Royal N. Torrey, Thomas Canary, William Johnson, Bernard Kelly, William C. Squier, John Fitch, Edward C. Byrne, Henry Smith, Benjamin Weed, Edward Coles, Samuel K. Jewett, Ezra Clark Jr., Issac Bell, John T. Conover.

These men were authorized to construct and operate an underground railroad in the following route: Beginning at Broadway and Park Place in front of the old City Hall and curving to City Hall Place, thence to Pearl Street, to Mulberry Street, to Bleecker Street, to Lafayette Place, to Astor Place, to Eighth Street and "easterly of St. Ann's church on Eighth Street" to Fourth Avenue, to Union Square, to 17th Street, private property, to 23d Street and Madison Square to 26th Street and Madison Avenue, up Madison Avenue to the Harlem River, and easterly and westerly along the Harlem River, connecting with the Harlem Bridge at Third Avenue.

North of 99th Street an elevated or surface road was permitted. South of that street the road was to be a subway, built deep enough to avoid interference with the water mains of the Croton Board. The fare was fixed at 6 cents for any distance under three miles and two cents for each additional mile or fraction. The road was to connect with the Harlem Railroad at 42d Street, and up to that point was to be finished in two years. The company was required to deposit $300,000 with the Controller of the City, to be forfeited if the road was not completed in that time. Five years more were allowed for the completion of the road to the Harlem River. It was to be operated in connection with the Harlem Railroad so that there should be "a steam road from one end of the Island to the other." This quotation is from the New York Times of April 18, 1868, which stated that among the incorporators were Edward Dodge, of Jay Cooke and Co.; Henry F. Vail, of the Bank of Commerce and James M. Brown and Clarence Brown, of Brown Brothers.

The New York City Central company failed to deposit $300,000 with the Controller as provided in its charter, and went back to the next Legislature, that of 1869, for an amendment of the act. By an amendatory act, passed May 11, 1869, new directors were added and the time to do the work was extended. The new directors were Marshall O. Roberts, William A. Whitbeck and Origen Vandenburgh. The company was given two years in which to begin and five years in which to complete the work. After this act took effect the company retained three engineers, W. W. Evans, E. S. Chesbrough and George S. Greene, to make surveys. They did so and made a report to William B. Ogden, president of the company, in October, 1869. They estimated the cost of building and equipping the line, from the Battery to the Harlem River, at $17,625,301. From the traffic expected they estimated the gross earnings at $7,200,000 a year, of which $214,560 was to come from freight. They expected to carry 70,000,000 passengers a year. Operating expenses were estimated at $3,000,000, leaving $4,200,000 for interest and dividends. It was proposed to use locomotives with coke as fuel, and to have trains of from five to eight cars, each car to seat 40 passengers.

The two years in which the company was to begin work expired in May, 1871, and just before the limit some actual construction was done. According to the first report of the company, dated December 1, 1871, excavations were made in May at Madison Avenue and 96th Street and a cut was opened "to a proper point to begin a heading of the tunnel southwardly." It was also stated that a section of tunnel abutment wall was built on the route thirty feet deep between Bond and Great Jones streets. While this was enough to save the franchise, it proved of little moment, for the directors got to quarreling and no more work was done. After the year 1872 the company became embarrassed and in 1874 Origen Vandenburgh, one of the directors, sued and got judgment against it for about $95,000. This judgment was affirmed by a decree in 1876, when the property was sold under foreclosure, the total of Vandenburgh's claim then being $102,977.93. This indebtedness, it was said, was incurred during the years 1869, 1870 and 1871. Vandenburgh bought in the property, had its franchise amended by an act passed by the Legislature of 1880 and organized the New York Underground Railway company, which took over what was left of the old company. Vandenburgh was the man who began fighting for an underground franchise in 1865 after he had parted from Hugh B. Willson, whose original plan for a subway he supported in 1864.

A glimpse of the troubles of the New York City Central Underground company is given in a letter signed by W. W. Evans and published in the New York Herald early in February, 1875. Evans was chairman of the board of three engineers who reported on the scheme in 1869. In this letter he said:

"I might here state that a contract drawn by Mr. Ogden to build this railway was made and executed with a gentleman from London, and that this railway would have been built and in use at the present day but for three reasons: One was that Mr. Ogden was called to the West and was away for some months; another was that some of the members of the Board of Directors got a 'crotchet' in their heads that the contract had enormous profits in it and should be quashed, also that others wished 'a finger in this pie'; the third reason for the failure of this company and the contract was that Tweed was then 'the King' and nothing could be done without his assent and concurrence."

Other underground charters beside the New York City Central Underground and the Beach Pneumatic were granted by the Legislatures of those times, but for various reasons the roads so authorized were never built. Among them was the franchise of the New York City Rapid Transit Company, granted by an act of the Legislature of 1872. This act authorized Cornelius Vanderbilt (the Commodore) and such other persons as he should associate with him to organize this company, with a capital stock of $12,000,000 and to build and operate a two track tunnel railroad from the City Hall Park to Fifty-ninth street, with a connection with the Vanderbilt railroad system. The bill as first introduced covered a part of the route already granted to the New York City Central Underground company, but when Governor Hoffman during the session vetoed the second Beach tunnel bill because it did the same thing, Vanderbilt, in the last days of the session, had the measure amended so that a conflict with the Central Underground route was avoided. As amended the bill passed both houses and was approved by the Governor on May 22, 1872. The route as fixed was from the East Side of Broadway at City Hall Park eastward to Chatham or Centre Street, to Park Street, to Mott Street, to the Bowery, to Third Avenue, to Fourth Avenue and up Fourth Avenue to "a point between 48th Street and 59th Street."

While the bill was pending the Legislature passed another Vanderbilt measure, authorizing the separation of grades on the New York Central north of 42nd Street.

The charter of the Central Underground company also covered an East Side route, the line north of 23rd Street running up Madison Avenue to the Harlem River. While the Vanderbilt bill was pending in the Legislature, Oliver W. Barnes, president of the Central Underground company, publicly charged Vanderbilt with trying to steal the route of the latter. In a signed statement published in the New York Times of April 30, 1872, Barnes said the Vanderbilt bill was introduced at about the same time that news of the combination between the Hudson River and Harlem railroads for a line to Montreal was published, and that this line depended on the Central Underground route for access to New York City.

In the statement Barnes also declared that his company had only recently thrown off the control of the Tweed Ring, whose influence had prevented it from beginning work. The avowed purpose of the Ring, he said was to allow the charter to expire by lapse of time "in order that they might profit by other and competing schemes." When Tweed was Commissioner of Public Works in 1871 the Central Underground company applied to him for the necessary permit to open the streets for the beginning of work. The request was "met with a flat refusal and the threatening statement that the company should never put spade in the earth of Manhattan Island."

Before the Tweed Ring got control of the company, Barnes said, every effort was made to get Vanderbilt interested. His son-in-law was a director in the company, and he was offered every inducement to build the road. His only reply, according to Barnes, was: "No, I shall be underground a d----d sight sooner than this thing."

As before stated, however, the Vanderbilt bill was amended so that the route would not conflict with the Central Underground charter and became a law. The Commodore's plans must have changed soon after its passage, for the New York City Rapid Transit Company did not build. All that was done was to get the engineer of the Harlem Railroad Company, Mr. Buckhout, to make surveys, plans and estimates for the line. In 1877 Allan Campbell, Commissioner of Public Works of the City of New York, in a report to the Mayor on the feasibility of building a rapid transit road from 42d street down town by private enterprise, wrote:

"In regard to the Vanderbilt underground road, no reports or estimates were published, though surveys, plans and estimates were made by Mr. Buckhout, the engineer of the Harlem Railroad company. These documents cannot at present be found, but the information obtained by me when the work was under consideration, at which time I had several interviews with Commodore Vanderbilt upon the subject, will suffice for our present purpose."

Campbell then quoted the following figures, which he said had been prepared for Commodore Vanderbilt by "responsible and experienced contractors":

Construction work............... $6,000,000 
Private property................ 1,000,000 
Rolling stock and engineering....1,250,000 
10% for contingencies........... 850,000 
				 $9,100,000 

Campbell said the estimate for the same distance made by Chesbrough and Greene for the Central Underground company, was more than $10,000,000. He also cited the fact that the law provided for openings every 20 feet in the Vanderbilt tunnel.

Among other early charters for underground roads was one passed by the Legislature of 1868 to incorporate the New York and Brooklyn Iron Tubular Tunnel Company. This act authorized Silas C. Herring, George Hazewell and others to form a company with $5,000,000 capital to "erect an iron tubular tunnel" across the bed of the East River from a point between Wall and Jackson streets, New York, to a point between Montague street and Hudson Avenue, Brooklyn. The act failed to specify what the tunnel was to be used for, and in 1869 it was amended to authorize the company to transport passengers and freight through it. The amendment changed the name of the company to the New York Tunnel Company and allowed the company two years to begin and seven years to complete the work. Nothing ever came of this ambitious scheme, which was the forerunner of the present sub-river tunnels built a quarter of a century later.

It was the Legislature of 1871 which passed the charter for the Tweed viaduct railroad. This act authorized Peter B. Sweeney, William M. Tweed Jr., Jose F. Navarro, James G. Bennett Jr., August Belmont, Horace Greeley, James B. Swain and others to incorporate the New York Railway company with $25,000,000 capital and to build and operate a steam railroad through blocks between Broadway and Chatham Street from Chambers Street north, up the East Side between Third Avenue and the East River to Harlem and up the West Side west of Sixth Avenue to Spuyten Duyvil near Kingsbridge. The fare was to be 15 cents from Chambers Street to Harlem and 20 cents to Kingsbridge. Tweed's downfall came so soon after the passage of this act that nothing was done with the franchise, which lapsed by time limitation. This was the franchise that called for the investment of $5,000,000 by the City of New York.

On May 25, 1871, the incorporators met in the City Hall, New York, and elected directors. The meeting was held in the Governors' Room, and among those present were Peter B. Sweeney, Hugh Smith, Forbes Holland, J. J. Sewell, Leopold Eidlitz, James P. Burnett, R. B. Connolly, William R. Travers, William M. Tweed Jr., Sheppard Knapp -- the first ten of the incorporators, and Senator Cauldwell, James Sweeney, Oswald Ottendorfer, Justice Shandley, James Irving, Alderman Cowan "and many other well known Democratic politicians".

It was a cause for wonder at the time how Tweed managed to get prominent men not identified with politics to join with him in this scheme, but he succeeded in convincing many that the only way to get rapid transit was through a company which had his support, and men like A. T. Stewart, August Belmont, Horace Greeley and John Jacob Astor took stock in the enterprise and allowed themselves to be named and advertised as directors. The new directors met in June to take subscriptions to the capital stock of the company, for the act provided that no steps toward construction could be taken until at least $1,000,000 had been subscribed. Most of the directors took 500 shares each.

But Tweed's downfall was approaching, and he was soon deserted by his respectable associates. In November all the directors of the company resigned, and the board was reorganized with the Tweed men left out. John Taylor Johnston was elected president and the following men composed the new board of directors: A. T. Stewart, Sydney Dillon, August Belmont, Charles A. Lamont, James F. D. Lanier, Franklin Osgood, William Butler Duncan, Oswald Ottendorfer, Charles L. Tiffany, William R. Travers, William B. Ogden, John Jacob Astor, Abram S. Hewitt, Levi P. Morton, S. D. Babcock, William P. Blodgett, James B. Colgate, Jose F. Navarro, Edward B. Westley, John Taylor Johnston, Andrew H. Green, William H. Appleton and Joseph Seligman.

This was a board to command the confidence of the financial world, but even with such men interested the viaduct scheme was found to be too expensive to justify the large investment involved, and no serious effort was made to carry it out. The project languished and the franchise lapsed. It was impracticable from the start, for it contemplated the purchase of a wide right of way through blocks of property so valuable that a road built thereon could not possibly get enough traffic to pay the interest on the investment.

The collapse of the Viaduct Railway stimulated interest in the underground projects, forgotten during its exploitation by Tweed. Vandenburgh tried to inject new life into the Central Underground company by proposing a consolidation of that concern with the reorganized Viaduct company, but nothing came of the move, and in a few months Vandenburgh was busy at Albany trying to save the Central Underground franchise from being wiped out by the grant to the Vanderbilt company (the New York City Rapid Transit Company) by the Legislature of 1872.

Forty years later, namely in 1912, when the Metropolitan Street Railway Company was being reorganized after passing through the hands of receivers, the new company was named the New York Railways Company, the plural of "Railway" being used because the name of Tweed's company, the New York Railway Company, still stood on the list of chartered corporations.

Perhaps the oddest of all the schemes for rapid transit which got the ear of the Legislature was that contemplated by the charter of the Metropolitan Transit Company, granted by act of 1872. This was the project of James B. Swain, once State Engineer. It was known as the "two-tier" railroad, but in reality was a three deck highway. Instead of using the streets, Swain proposed to buy a right of way through blocks, and in this right of way build three railroads, one over the other. The lowest level was to be a subway for freight, the next a slightly depressed road for passenger traffic and the third was to be an elevated structure from which passenger cars would hang suspended and be drawn by horses driven on the roadway below. Aside from its fantastic nature, the cost of right of way and construction would have been prohibitive, yet in those days Swain, a good engineer, was enthusiastic over the plan and enlisted sufficient support to get his bill through the Legislature. The route was to be from Bowling Green to Morris Street and through blocks west of Sixth Avenue to 37th street, thence over to Seventh Avenue and through blocks west of it to 42d Street, with a branch to the Grand Central station, then up to 58th Street and Broadway and then west of Ninth Avenue to 175th Street and the Harlem River. In spite of the costly nature of the scheme, the capital stock authorized was only $5,000,000.

Swain never raised the capital to build the road, but he worked at it for several years. In February, 1875, his company issued a statement soliciting subscriptions to $2,000,000 of the stock and $1,000,000 of the bonds, in which it was said:

"All the preliminary steps required by the statute have been taken, and the construction of said railroad has been commenced sufficient to comply with the charter, Peter Cooper, the venerable philanthropist, laying the corner stone of the structure Dec. 24, 1874."

Another tubular tunnel act was passed by the Legislature of 1873. It authorized Drake DeKay and others to form a company and build and operate a tubular tunnel from Staten Island to New Jersey under the waters of the Kill van Kull or Staten Island Sound. It allowed the directors to use any motive power found desirable and to charge any rate of fare, but when the profits exceeded 12 per cent. the fare was to be reduced. The amount of capital stock authorized was $300,000. Nothing ever came of the scheme.

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