buildings and their growth skyward." Rapid transit in New York had its beginnings in the year 1864 just as the final great battles of the Civil War were unfolding. At that time, most of New York City was located below 23rd Street, Harlem had been "discovered, and a few venturesome pioneers had built homes there. The great majority of the citizens dwelt south of 42nd Street" (Walker 1).
Many of the streets were unpaved and public transportation consisted largely of horse-drawn cars or extremely crowded omnibuses. Steam trains moved people out of the city or into it. While the city had become metropolitan, it was still experiencing dramatic growth which would last for a quarter of a century. Walker (2) suggests that the invention of the electric light, the use of elevators, and the achievement of rapid transit were instrumental in facilitating this growth. In 1865, New York City did not resemble the form it would ultimately assume. Above 42nd Street, "it could scarcely be said to exist, being only a dreary waste of unpaved and ungraded streets diversified by rocky eminences crowned with squatters' shanties. Railway passengers from the north still left their trains at Twenty-Seventh and Thirtieth Streets. Street railways were comparatively few and there was no speedy and comfortable way of getting from one end of the city to the other" (Walker 2).
The streetcars that constituted public transportation in New York were drawn by horses and had been introduced in 1832, when the first car in the world to run on tracks was operated on Fourth Avenue between Prince Street and Fourteenth Street. A few years later this line was changed to steam operation and about 1852 the horse car movement was improved and expanded. By 1864, the number of lines had increased to 12 and carried about 61 million passengers annually in a city with a population of about 700,000 (Walker 2).
By 1864, Mark Feinman (1) states that the situation...