William Barclay Parsons had been the chief engineer of the Rapid Transit Commission of 1894 that had investigated the technical feasibility of a New York subway. He was taken on by August Belmont as his chief engineer. As such he became the IRT's principal designer and builder. He was a patrician, a highly competent engineer and an inspirational leader. He took his motto from St. Paul: "This one thing I do." He held to Marcus Aruelius' dictum: "No one effort of a single individual is ever fails to leave behind its effect. There rests on men, as individuals, an inescapable responsibility for all their acts."

Parsons recommended that the subway should be electric. It was also he who decided that the subway be built within 15 to 20 feet of the surface, bypassing Manhattan's hard schist which would have been very difficult to tunnel through. His engineering plan proposed a single level, four track, shallow railroad. Some stretches were to have only two and three tracks.

Ground breaking was on 24 March 1900. John Philip Sousa and his band performed.

The actual work began on 26 March 1900. Despite a strike in March 1903 and a general strike in May 1903 the work was completed on schedule. In September 1904 electricity began for the first time to flow through the subway. It was provided by a dedicated power plant on 11 Avenue and West 58th Street. It was, at the time, the largest electricity generating plant in the nation. Its four, coal fired, turbo generators produced 100,000 horse power. Opening day was 27 October 1904.

The work was done largely with picks and shovels, percussion drills and dynamite. The labor force of 12,000 was mainly Irish and Italian. The unskilled workers earned  between 20 to 25 cents an hour. Skilled labor was paid a quarter dollar.

The construction method was called,"shallow excavation "or cut and cover. The alternative required sinking a pit and then drilling a lateral tunnel. That was how the London Underground had been built. "Cut and cover" was pioneered by the Hungarians when building the Budapest subway which opened in 1896.This shallow subway meant passengers were saved a lot of stairs and there was no need for elevators. The Budapest method  involved tearing open the street and digging a twenty foot deep trench. The buildings on the side of the trench had to be shored up, the water and gas pipes electric cable, telephone and telegraph lines,sewers, and steam mains were then all detoured. In all 45 miles of conduits were thus diverted. Provisional wooden bridges carried pedestrian and vehicular street traffic.

Above 10th Street it was necessary to blast through solid rock. But there were areas where the soil was so sandy, or water soaked or unstable as to prohibit any digging. The solution was rerouting.

The trench typically was dug to form a 55 foot wide tunnel, 15 feet high. It was given a 4 inch concrete foundation. Steel I beams were stood up at five foot intervals along either side of the trench and were then embedded inside a concrete wall. This produced an elongated rectangular box inside of which stood additional I beams on five foot centers which supported the ceiling.

But this quick and cheap "cut and cover" method was not suitable for close to half of the work. Under the East River and the Harlem River cast iron and concrete lined tunnels were required. Because of the way the land undulated, the subway came up and traveled in the open for about five miles. Thus, for example, between 122 Street and 135th Street the tracks ran on a steel viaduct above the 2,240 foot deep Manhattan Valley.

For two miles, from 158th Street to Hillside, very deep tunneling was required. It reached a depth of 180 feet at 191st Street. That work was done by experienced miners form South Africa, Colorado and Wales who earned 35 cents an hour.

Though the work of blasting was performed by experienced professionals the unstable schist produced rock slides and cave ins and cost lives. One dynamite blast loosened a 300 ton boulder that killed 10 men. In January 1902 a huge explosion at 41 Street and Park resulted from negligence. Moses Epps, a powderman lit a candle to warm his hands within a few feet of 548 pounds of dynamite. There were 185 casualties including people eating lunch in the Murray Hill Hotel. Epps himself was not seriously hurt.

The worst accident occurred in 1903 at 145th Street at Fort George. A delayed dynamite blast killed at least 50 and thousands were injured.

Mastodon bones were discovered near the Dyckman street station. Mystifyingly, the remains of a  Dutch ship, the Tiger, that sank in 1613, were dug up.

To improve the air in the tunnels 14 ventilation structures were spaced between 59th street and Brooklyn Bridge.

The general contractor was John McDonald from county Cork, Ireland. he was the fellow who had won the original January 1900 contract to build the subway. Unable to meet the required bond deposit he released the contract to August Belmont. That banker then formed the Rapid Transit Subway Construction Co. and made McDonald his principal contractor. He proved highly competent.

Belmont demanded from his engineers a fail-proof method of signaling. Consequently the IRT opened in 1904 with a radical new system of automatic block control where an electric current traveling through the wheels of a train actuates red signals for the train behind. The system came to have 17,000 switches.

By 1920 the tracks of the IRT together with those of the BMT gave New York the largest rapid transit system in the world. Its 202 route miles handily beat London with  156.6 miles. Its 24 hour capacity was 35 million people which was 1/3 the nation's population.

Ground breaking on the IND began in March 1925. In the end its cost was close to $800 million, twice what experts had estimated it should have cost.

The IND's first section, 12 miles of track, a part of the  8th Avenue line, opened in September 1932.

More Recent Construction:

In 1970s the TA spent $400,000 to fix 119 obstructions in IND and BMT tunnels to accommodate an increase in train length from a standard 60 feet to 75 feet.

The Archer Avenue Line with its two miles of tracks and three stations was begun in 1972 and opened in 1988. It links the Queens Boulevard IND Line with the elevated Jamaica Avenue BMT Line. It cost $456 million.

The 63rd Street Extension, running for 3.2 miles and linking Roosevelt Island with Manhattan, cost $868 million and went into service in 1989..

Construction of 2nd Avenue line began in 1973  but stopped in 1975.

Shiny worn rails are  periodically replaced by new rusty rails Straight lines (tangents) can last a very long time, but curved rails need sometimes to be replaced as quickly as every 12 to 13 months, others last 17 and 18 months. A section of rail weighs 1100 pounds and takes 12 men , six on each side to lift them in place

Rebuilding the track and roadbed for 1000 feet once was a labor of nine weeks .Now, with mechanical spike pullers, it can be done over a weekend . Payloaders scoop up the old ballast. Power spoke drivers drive spikes into holes predrilled at the yard.. Finally a mechanical ballast tamper machine  jams the ballast under the ties

A special force of PD men (power distribution) care for and repair  the subway' s power supply, the live  third rail. They always work hot, and often try to rescue dogs and cats. This is the most dangerous job.

Manhattan now has 67 route miles of underground tunnels, and  4 miles of elevated tracks.
Queens      now has 15 route miles of underground tunnels and 20 miles of elevated tracks.
Brooklyn    now has 43 route miles of underground tunnels and 28 miles of elevated tracks.
Bronx        now has 12 route miles of underground tunnels and 18 miles of elevated tracks.

There are an additional 23 miles of embankment and surface tracks.

SOME BOOKS on the building of New York's subway to which the above is indebted:

Bobrick, Benson. (1981). Labyrinths of Iron: A History of the World's Subways. New York: Newsweek Books. (Call #: JSE 81-1241)

Hood, Clifton. (1993). 722 Miles: the Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York.: N.Y. Simon and Schuster. (Call #: JSE 94-378 or 388.428 H)

Interborough Rapid Transit. The New York Subway: Its Construction and Equipment.(1991) N.Y. Fordham University Press. (Call #: JSF 91-519 or 625.42 N) (Online version: http://www.nycsubway.org/irtbook/ )

Lavis, Fred. (1915). Building the New Rapid Transit System of New York City. New York: Hill Publishing Company. (Call #: TPYM)
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