Alfred E. Beach

[3rdrail]

Alfred Ely Beach pioneered the first subway in New York by means of secretly constructing a passenger-carrying pneumatic system twleve feet under the streets of New York, at a time in which the Boss Tweed establishment vehemently opposed the construction of such a system. He adorned his "terminal" with opulent candlabras, a piano, and decorative adornment in his short-lived 1870 Broadway tunnel. Many years later, sandhogs digging under Broadway for the B.R.T. broke into Beach's long abandoned tunnel, surprised that they were not the first !