Themes in American History

Through out this course I have learned many new things about New York City that have caught my interest. We have gone back in time when the Native Americans once called New York City “Manhattan Island”; we have seen how it has evolved from being a successful port city up until the present time. The commencement of the “Rapid Transit Railroad,” now known as the MTA, took place on March 24^th 1900 in City Hall Park; the changes have been great ones and its history is well told in the New York City Transit Museum.

In class we learned that the majority of men who helped built the subway system were unskilled immigrants. Construction for the subway was not easy nor was it safe for these workers. They had to deal with dangerous conditions around them all the time. Dynamite blasts were common working conditions that would lead to rockslides.  The worst dynamite blast construction accident occurred on October 24, 1903, in the Washington Heights tunnel near 190^th street and St. Nicholas Avenue. A dynamite explosion led to a rumble where a 300-ton boulder crashed down onto working men. Floods were also unsafe conditions and many miners suffered from lung disease.

This museum also has a section on Robert Moses. Robert Moses despised mass transit. He cared more on accommodating the use of cars by creating the expressways. The museum gives him a great section on showing how he also contributed to the transit of New York by his creation of the interstate highways. After all the car, and mass transit is what gets us from point A to point B in such a grand city.

The Transit Museum has a great exhibition on everything that has to do with the evolution of the subway. There have been about ten turnstiles, a paper ticket worth a nickel to use the subway, and six different types tokens; now of course, we use the metro card to ride the subway.

I really had a great time going through the different types of train models they have. I was able to get a feeling of how riding the subway was back in its early times. I noticed that as the models changed, there were less and less seats. What caught my attention were the ads they had even in the early years of the MTA.

Overall I enjoyed this museum. It has a great visual and physical experience of the past. It had things I learned in class so it felt good walking into a familiar place, even though it is history.

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NYC and Chicago’s subway system are two of the oldest transit systems in America.  Compared to NYC’s subway system, the Chicago ‘L’ is less complex, composed of eight lines and connecting the outer counties to the commercial center of downtown Chicago.  NYC in the 20th century utilized technology and innovation to create a massive underground network that connects all five boroughs, while Chicago limited it’s transit system to eight lines, an elevated rail, and one connecting center called The Loop. The first Chicago ‘L’ s  first locomotive operated on June 6, 1892 when it departed 39th Street Station and arrived at Congress St. Terminal.  It’s drawback during the early years of operation was that none of the lines entered the city center but instead dropped everyone off at a subterminal where the majority of workers still had to walk to their jobs.  State regulations impeded the expansion of the subway system because property owners had to approve the expansion of elevated rails directing going into their neighborhood and over public streets.  After the development of the Loop (a center that connected the eight lines) and the introduction of an express line in the 1940’s, ridership and the efficiency of the rail increased.

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