Beach Pneumatic Transit (NYC) - view from within the tunnel

The 1870 Beach Pneumatic System -- the NYC underground rapid transit system that could have been.

Alfred Ely Beach, inventor and co-publisher of Scientific American, had a vision: an elaborate underground system run by massive fans that pushed and pulled cars through a tight tube. He even managed to build a prototype, which he put on display at the 1867 American Institute Fair. The fair-goers' enthusiastic reception to Beach's prototype encouraged him to take the next step and implement his idea underground. But Beach had one big obstacle: Boss Tweed. Tweed, a notoriously corrupt New York politician, had his own ideas about New York City transportation, and granting Beach permission to build something that might detract from Tweed's profits was simply not going to happen. 

Knowing that a direct approach would be futile, Beach hatched a plan to secretly build what he wanted to build, right under Tweed's nose. Beach proposed an underground pneumatic mail distribution system, the likes of which were already in use in London. Tweed took no issue with this seemingly innocuous postal system, and granted Beach permission to get to work. In the end, it took Beach and his men 58 days to build what was ostensibly the agreed-upon mail distribution system.

It was quite a curious surprise, then, when the doors opened in February of 1870 to reveal a one-block public transportation system: an 8' wide, 300' long tunnel that ran 20' under street level from Murray Street to Warren Street along Broadway, with an incredible white-brick waiting station filled with paintings, a grand piano, and a fountain. The public and press were immediately impressed with the Beach's creation. 400,000 rode his subway in its first year at 25 cents a piece. 

So would Boss Tweed allow this deceitful Beach to expand his coverage to all of Manhattan, after seeing the pneumatic people-moving technology at work? No. And neither would politicians firmly in Tweed's pocket. Beach's idea stagnated, even after Tweed lost his political foothold in New York. Further zoning and financial issues led to the sidelining of the idea, until it was eventually forgotten about entirely. In fact, Beach's tunnel surprised builders in 1912 who were hard at work building the NYC subway we all know today, and it was likely destroyed during continued construction.

But for a brief moment in the 1870s, in a New York that had still not decided on its infrastructural legacy, the future was aglow with possibility of a pneumatic transit system, the likes of which have never been seen since.

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