6 train), west along 42nd Street to Times Square (the route used today by the Grand Central Shuttle), and north along Broadway to 145th Street (the route used today by the No. Starting at City Hall in Manhattan, the first subway line that opened on Octoran north along Centre Street, Elm Street (now Lafayette Street), Fourth Avenue, and Park Avenue to Grand Central Station (the route used today by the No. New York lost no time in advancing a plan for the construction of its own underground rapid transit system, adopting the alignment of first subway route that same year. The Tremont Street Subway in Boston opened in 1897 and was the first subway in the United States (although it was a streetcar line and not a rapid transit system). NYC's first subway line included a 2,174-foot (663 m) long viaduct across the Manhattan Valley in Harlem. Nonetheless, Beach's pneumatic subway helped to demonstrate the practicality of constructing an underground railroad in Manhattan. Although Beach received a charter to extend the line from the Battery to Columbus Circle, the Panic of 1873 and innovations in electric traction motors left the pneumatic subway as a short-lived public demonstration project. An eight-foot (2.4 m) long car that could carry 18 passengers was blown through the tunnel by a 100 horsepower (74.5 kW) fan the blower was reversed to create a partial vacuum and suck the car back through the tunnel. Constructed by inventor Alfred Ely Beach, the editor of Scientific American, the subway was driven by pneumatic power. The City's first subway opened back in 1870, a short underground tunnel under Broadway that stretched 312 feet (95 m) from Warren Street to Murray Street near City Hall. Fortunately, practical electric power arrived on the scene and underground railways soon became a possibility. Engineers looked to an underground solution to add new transportation lines, eliminating the nuisances caused by elevated railroads in the densely populated Manhattan, such as noise, smoke, and a lack of sunlight to the street below. 6) Line.Īs New York City grew and expanded in the nineteenth century its transportation facilities advanced from horse-drawn streetcars to elevated trains pulled by steam locomotives, but late in the century these facilities were being taxed beyond capacity. Now closed to the public, the station is used by local trains turning around on the IRT Lexington Avenue (No. The City Hall Station in Manhattan was the beginning of the first New York City Subway.

New york subway station