Alfred Ely Beach
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Alfred Ely Beach (September 1, 1826 – January 1, 1896) was an inventor, publisher and patent lawyer. Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and was the son of a prominent publisher, Moses Beach. Alfred Beach worked for his father until he and a friend decided to buy Scientific American, a relatively new publication.
Beach announced that the magazine would help obtain patents for American investors, a move that launched his career as a patent lawyer and helped his magazine grow into a prestigious publication. Beach also patented some of his own inventions, notably an early typewriter designed for use by the blind. However, Beach's most famous invention was New York City's first subway.
The corrupt rule of Tammany Hall in New York City had left the city's streets in very poor shape and traffic congestion, particularly in the Broadway area, was a nightmare. Beach wanted to build a subway under Broadway to help relieve the traffic congestion. A subway had been built in London, but it used steam engines and was somewhat inefficient. Using two of his inventions, a hydraulic tunneling machine and a pneumatic subway, Beach proposed a new type of subway that relied on pneumatics.
Boss Tweed, the leader of Tammany Hall, is often said to have opposed Beach's subway, in part because it would threaten the city's streetcar franchises, which gave money to Tammany Hall. However, Tweed's business associate Peter B Sweeny was in fact involved with Beach's company. In addition, Beach had the required state permits to build his subway, so in the end there was nothing city officials could do to stop him.
Although construction initially began with a low public profile, as construction equipment began blocking nearby streets and excavation caused Broadway to sink in some spots, the New York Times ran a series of articles on the pneumatic subway construction beginning in January 1870, including diagrams and maps of the 100-yard tunnel. The subway was finally completed, and opened to the public on February 26, 1870. Beach wanted to build a larger subway for the city and attempted to pass a transportation bill in the state legislature that would allow him to start the project. The transportation bill passed the legislature, but was vetoed by Governor John Hoffman, a member of Tammany Hall. Beach continued his attempts to get the transportation bill passed until a new governor finally signed it in 1873. However, Beach no longer had the financial backing or the public support for the project.
The original station, built in the basement of Devlin's Clothing Store (at the corner of Boradway and Warren), was destroyed by fire in 1898. In 1912 workers for Degnon Contracting excavated the remaining portion of the tunnel during the construction of a BMT electric subway line running under Broadway. Its location today is almost entirely contained within the City Hall Station on the MTA's R and W Lines.
Beach spent the rest of his life starting a school for freed slaves and creating a Spanish language science magazine. He died of pneumonia on January 1, 1896 in New York City at the age of 69.
Nearly a century later, in the late 1970s, his work on the first New York Subway was immortalized in the Klaatu song Sub-Rosa Subway.
[edit] Popular culture
- Beach's Subway is known to exist in several popular culture references, the first being in the above named song, Sub-Rosa Subway.
- The second noted appearance was in 1989's comedy, Ghostbusters II.
The set featured artistic features (Specifically the vaulted arches and replica Guastavino tile featured on the set) which were inspired primarily by the City Hall (IRT Lexington Avenue Line). The main inspiration from the real pneumatic railroad (Excluding the history) was the tunnel entrance, featuring keystone dedication of "Pneumatic 1870 Transit".
The history of the station would have been included in a deleted scene of dialogue between Dr. Peter Venkman and Dr. Egon Spengler as Dr. Ray Stantz began to descend into the tunnel.
Peter: "NYPRR?" Egon: "The New York Pneumatic Railroad, fan forced air trains, built around 1870."
It is not known if this scene was filmed as Ray entered the station, or, as suggested by The Real Ghostbusters in Ghostbusters II when Ray removed a manhole cover bearing the initials: "NYPRR".
- Beach's Subway also makes an appearance in the fictional anthology Wild Cards by George R. R. Martin. In the episode "Down Deep" by Edward Bryant and Leanne C Harper, the character Sewer Jack has refurbished one of the ornate subway stations as a private abode.
- Alfred Ely Beach has a Chatham County High School named after him in Savannah, Georgia.
- A recent appearance of the Beach Subway was within An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island. In the film, Fievel Mousekewitz and Tony venture into the disused 'Beachs pneumatic railroad' (sic), visiting the station; looking at the car and traveling into the tunnel. A brief and accurate description of the system was given by Tony, however due to the lack of surviving photographic reference of the real railway some artistic licences in design was taken by the artists, including a station entrance on the street which resembled the cast iron kiosk entrance used on the IRT Subway in New York.
- It was mentioned on CSI: NY on 9/27/2006, as one of the many unused tunnels under the city.
