New York’s Secret Subway

In 1869, visionary inventor Alfred Ely Beach secretly built the city’s very first underground train beneath the bustling streets of New York City. Convinced that subterranean travel was the cure for the city’s overwhelming street congestion, Beach defied political roadblocks and built a pneumatic subway. Hundreds of thousands of people lined up to ride his futuristic prototype, more than three decades before New York’s first official subway line opened.

Discover this hidden chapter of transit history with Matthew Algeo, author of New York’s Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit, as he reveals the clandestine creation of the nation’s first operational subway.