Subway Opens in New York: 150,000 Ride First Line

More than 150,000 New Yorkers packed into the stations and cars of the city's first underground subway on October 27, 1904, riding a 9.1-mile line from City Hall to 145th Street in Harlem for a nickel a fare. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company's new subway was not the world's first underground railway (London had opened its Metropolitan line in 1863), but it was the fastest, the most modern, and the beginning of a system that would reshape one of the world's great cities. The impetus for building underground came from a catastrophe. The Great Blizzard of 1888 had buried New York under drifts as high as fifty feet, paralyzing the elevated railways and horse-drawn streetcars that served as the city's primary transportation. The storm demonstrated that any reliable transit system needed to run below the surface, beyond the reach of weather. But political corruption, real estate disputes, and fights over financing delayed construction for more than a decade. Work finally began in 1900 under the direction of chief engineer William Barclay Parsons. The project employed roughly 12,000 workers, predominantly Italian and Irish immigrants, who dug through Manhattan's bedrock using a combination of open-cut trenching and tunnel boring. The work was dangerous: cave-ins, dynamite accidents, and encounters with underground rivers killed dozens. Workers earned roughly $2 per day for ten-hour shifts. Opening day was pandemonium. Crowds waited hours to board trains that ran every few minutes. Mayor George McClellan Jr. insisted on driving the first train himself and reportedly refused to relinquish the controls, taking the train past its intended stop. Passengers marveled at the electric lighting, the tiled station walls, and the speed: the express train covered the route in roughly 26 minutes, far faster than any surface transportation. The subway's effect on New York was immediate and permanent. Neighborhoods in upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens that had been semi-rural became accessible to downtown workers, triggering massive residential development and population growth. The five-cent fare, which remained unchanged until 1948, made the subway democratic: bankers and laborers rode the same trains. The system expanded rapidly, reaching 472 stations across four boroughs and becoming the backbone of a city that could not function without it.