While Beach did eventually get a charter for his subway, the money soon "dried up" during a financial panic. Pushcarts, carriages, wagons, buggies, and people made their way through the streets of lower Manhattan while "herds of pigs, sheep, and other animals were driven through on way to slaughter." Beach's plan was a subterranean, pneumatically powered railway, but he had difficulty trying to convince William "Boss" Tweed, who was more inclined to support his friends' ideas. Not only were New York's cobblestone streets littered with garbage during that period, they were congested. Shana Corey's The Secret Subway (Schwartz & Wade/Random, 2016) tells the story of Alfred Ely Beach's (1826-1896) dogged determination to bring New York City "into the future" in the late 1800s.
0 kommentar(er)
