Subway Symbiosis

Development Follows in Tracks of Rapid Transit

by James Murdock

Planners believed that mass transit was the only way to ensure that New York City grew to be world-class. Indeed, the subway fueled development up and down the lines and eased congestion in Midtown.

New Yorkers rely on their subway system to a degree unimaginable in any other metropolis. There are times when it simply is the fastest, most practical way of getting around town. Virtually everyone carries a Metrocard.

"Without the subway, the city couldn't operate," said Kenneth Jackson, a professor of history and social sciences at Columbia University. "There's no way in the world everyone could come into town, and we'd have to tear down half the buildings for people to park their cars."

The beauty of New York is that you don't need a car. During the early 20th Century, the city grew in the tracks of rapid transit. The subway freed up land in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Developers built new housing in these boroughs to relieve overcrowding in Manhattan. If the subway hadn't been built, it is very likely people would have moved out of New York City entirely.

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Until the 1870s, New York City boasted the world's best transportation system, said Clifton Hood, an associate professor of history at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. A network of elevated railroads and omnibus lines snaked throughout lower Manhattan and up both sides of Central Park.

But omnibuses moved at the same pace as street traffic, which was roughly 3 mph; the best that elevated railroads could do was 12 mph. These networks soon were inadequate to satisfy, much less solve, the challenges posed by the city's exploding population. New York City grew from 79,000 people in 1800 to more than 3.4 million residents in 1900. Most lived in already-congested neighborhoods downtown.

"Manhattan is a long, narrow island," Hood said. "While there was empty land for development at the top of the island, we needed high-capacity, high-speed transportation to bring these new residential areas within reach of downtown."

Civic leaders grew concerned that without rapid transit, New York City would begin losing businesses, residents and tax revenue to New Jersey or to Brooklyn, which was still an independent city. But Tammany politicians were in cahoots with omnibus owners and prevented any attempts at rapid transit planning. Not until Abram Hewitt, a reformer who was elected mayor in 1887, did the subway become a possibility.

"Hewitt is a fairly unknown mayor who served just one term, but he was a true visionary," said transit historian and author Brian Cudahy.