Beach

Alfred Ely Beach

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, Orson D Munn, decided to buy Scientific American, a relatively new publication. They ran Scientific American until their deaths decades later, and it was carried on by their sons and grandsons for decades more. Munn and Beach also established a very successful patent agency. Beach patented some of his own inventions, notably an early typewriter designed for use by the blind. After the Civil War he founded a school for freed slaves in Savannah, the Beach Institute, which is now the home of the King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation.^[1]

However, Beach's most famous invention was New York City's first subway.

By the 1860s traffic in New York was a nightmare, especially along the central artery, Broadway. Beach was one of a few visionaries who proposed building an underground railway under Broadway to help relieve the traffic congestion. The inspiration was the underground Metropolitan Railway in London but in contrast to that and others' proposals for New York, Beach proposed the use of trains propelled by pneumatics instead of conventional steam engines, and construction using a tunnelling shield of his invention to minimize disturbing the street.^[2]

Beach was also interested in pneumatic tubes for the transport of letters and packages, another idea recently put into use in London.^[3] With a franchise from the state he began construction of a tunnel for small pneumatic tubes in 1869, but diverted it into a demonstration of a passenger railway that opened on February 26, 1870.^[4] To build a passenger railway he needed a different franchise, something he lobbied for over four legislative sessions, 1870 to 1873. Construction of the tunnel was obvious from materials being delivered to Warren St near Broadway, and was documented in newspaper reports, but Beach kept all details secret until the New York Tribune published a possibly planted article a few weeks before opening.^[5]

Plan of the Beach Pneumatic Transit station and tunnel

In 1870 state senator William M. Tweed introduced a bill for Beach's subway that did not pass.^[6] By the end of 1871 Tweed's Tammany Hall political machine was in disgrace and from then on Beach claimed that Tweed had opposed his subway in an effort to gain support from reformers.^[7] The real opposition to the subway was from politically connected property owners along Broadway, led by A T Stewart and John Jacob Astor III, who feared that tunnelling would damage buildings and interfere with surface traffic.^[8] Bills for Beach's subway passed the legislature in 1871 and 1872 but were vetoed by Governor John T. Hoffman because he said that they gave away too much authority without compensation to the city or state. In 1873 Governor John Adams Dix signed a similar bill into law, but Beach was not able to raise funds to build over the next six months, and then the Panic of 1873 dried up the financial markets.^[2]

During this same time, other investors had built an elevated railway in Greenwich St and Ninth Ave, which operated successfully with a small steam engine starting in 1870. The wealthy property owners did not object to this railway well away from Broadway, and by the mid 1870s it appeared that elevated railways were practical and underground railways were not, setting the pattern for rapid transit development in New York for the rest of the 19th century.^[2]

Beach operated his demonstration railway from February 1870 to April 1873. It had one station in the basement of Devlin's clothing store, a building at the southwest corner of Broadway and Warren St, and ran for a total of about 300 feet, first around a curve to the center of Broadway and then straight under the center of Broadway to the south side of Murray St. ^[4] The former Devlin's building was destroyed by fire in 1898.^[9] In 1912 workers for Degnon Contracting excavated the tunnel proper during the construction of a subway line running under Broadway. The tunnel was completely within the limits of the present day City Hall station under Broadway.^[10]

Beach died of pneumonia on January 1, 1896 in New York City at the age of 69.^[1]

Popular culture

• Beach's Subway is known to exist in several popular culture references, the first being in the Klaatu song, Sub-Rosa Subway.

• The second noted appearance was in 1989's comedy, Ghostbusters II.

The Fictional Van Horne Station

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 Beach also plays a main role in the book The Downsiders by Neal Shusterman.

• 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.

• Alfred Ely Beach and a fictional version of his subway work is a prominent feature in Neal Shusterman's young adult novel, Downsiders.

References

External links

• Alfred Beach's Pneumatic Subway and the beginnings of rapid transit in New York by Joseph Brennan

Donate to Wikimedia