UNDERGROUND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3111, 29 October 1913, Page 76

UNDERGROUND.

MODERN NEW YORK LIFE

In an illustrated article in the Popular Mechanic Magazine Mr Leo L. Redding states that from a million and a-half to a million and three-quarters of the residents of New York spend a portion of each day underground, and many thousands come to the surface so rarely that the light of day blinds them when they reach it. Discussing this phase of modern city life, Mr Redding continues ; —“So accustomed has New York become to the idea of living underground that only a few days ago a public celebration was held. when a new underground passageway was opened. This newest tunnel, costing many thousands of dollars, was dug to give the people who live near the Hudson River and in the neighbourhood of One-hundred-and-eighty-first street an opportunity to pass beneath the hills from their home to the subway, by which means they travel to the lower end of Manhattan Island, to Brooklyn, and, by means of a transfer, to New Jersey. Until this underground cut-off was opened the same citizens had to walk about 1000 ft up and down hill, breathing the good outdoor air. Now they will make the same trip underground through a damp, dingy passageway, and because they save a few hundred feet and a bit of exertion consider themselves fortunate.

—Remarkable Statistics.— According to the best obtainable statistics, about 20,000 persons in New York City spend their entire working hours beneath the surface of the earth. These figures include 3800 employees on the two systems of subways now in operation. They include 4000 men who are employed digging the new subways. This force will be more than doubled in the near future. Also izicluded are the 1200 men, most of whom are working several hundred feet below the street surface, driving that wonderful aqueduct which is to carry throughout the Island of Manhattan and over into Long Island the waters that are being brought down by syphon from the Catskill Mountains. Then there are more than 10,000 men and women who are employed in more private enterprises that take them constantly below the street surface. On quite ordinary days 1,500,000 persons are accommodated in the New York subways, and the crowds are multiplying week by w'eek. Men go below the surface to reach the trains that are to take them from that architectural wonder, the new Pennsylvania Station, east and west out of the city. After they have reached the trains they are dropped still further underground, in order that they may pass beneath the bottom of the Hudson and East Rivers. To get out of New York City by means of the New York Central railroad or the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad, it is necessary to make use of that other architectural wonder the Grand Central Station, and again travellers drop down into the bowels of the earth before they may start. —A Family’s Novel Experience.— In the great hotels of New York the mechanical departments are all far beneath the street surface. These departments are well worth visiting, and in most cases the hotel proprietors are only too glad to permit their kitchens, bakeshops, furnace rooms, engine rooms, and to be inspected. These places ordinarily are the cleanest in the entire hetel. Many of New York’s greatest department stores are connected directly with the subways, as are also some of its new theatres. Last February a family of three from San Francisco visiting in New York, lived for a fortnight in one of the most fashionable and most expensive hotels in the city, spent most of their time shopping, sight-seeing, and theatre-going, and only once during the entire 14 days passed into the open air of the outside world. From their rooms in the hotel they were dropped by elevator to the level of the subway. Through the subway they went to department stores, theatres, restaurants, museums, and even to church. When they started for home they went by subway from their hotel to the Grand Central Station, and did not get out into sunlight until their train had well started on its long journey. And this was not on a bet. either.