Transportation

This is a complete facsimile of the 1904 edition originally published by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company to commemorate the opening of New York’s first subway line. From the perspective of both urban history and the history of transportation, this book is an important primary source.

Building the city’s first subway in the early years of the twentieth century required delicate collaboration between public and private interests and called for the expenditure of considerable sums of both public and private money. The book introduces us to Abram S. Hewitt, a late nineteenth-century mayor of New York City. It was Hewitt who realized that, while private capital alone had been perfectly adequate for building elevated rapid transit lines in New York as early as the 1870s, the more costly construction of underground rapid transit lines was far beyond the ability of private corporations to finance. Hewitt set in motion a chain of events that sanctioned the use of public funds for subway construction, with the completed facility then to be leased to a private company for day-to-day operation.

The private firm that emerged, both to build and to operate the first subway in New York, was called the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, a name that would later be rendered more crisply as the IRT. The City of New York and the Interborough Rapid transit Company inaugurated service over the city’s first subway line on Thursday afternoon, October 27, 1904. Mayor George B. McClellan, son of the Civil War general, took the controls of the first ceremonial train at City Hall Station in downtown Manhattan and headed north. In one way or another, the subway has been going ever since.

The book also presents important tabular and statistical information, as well as clear and concise narrative descriptions of technical details.

Brian Cudahy offers a fascinating tribute to the world the subway created. Taking a fresh look at one of the marvels of the 20th century, Cudahy creates a vivid sense of this extraordinary achievement—how the city was transformed once New Yorkers started riding in a hole in the ground.

Everyone wonders what goes on down a manhole. This book explores the mysteries beneath New York City's streets, telling the story of hidden pipes and cables and how they are kept in order. It might be called a Sidewalk Superintendent's Guide, but it is much more than that. It is a vivid account of a city in action.

The author received the generous cooperation of the engineering personnel of the public utilities and the municipal departments of the city. The text is enhanced by numerous photographs, maps, and diagrams.

Harry Granick's Underneath New York was the first book to describe the anatomy of a modern city.

The port of New York, Manhattan Harbor, is always bustling; any resident of or visitor to New York is quick to recognize the integral part the port plays in the life of the city, but the vessels that keep it alive are rarely focused on. In these six stories, Brian Cudahy provides us with a unique and wonderful tour of the port of New York through the 20th century. From the Iron Steamboat Company to the Norwiegan Cruise lines, Around Manhattan Island is a treasure for all with an interest in maritime history, and for all who love New York.

On November 1, 1918, as the Great War in Europe was entering its final hours, a five-car elevated train was heading for the Flatbush section of Brooklyn with hundreds of homeward-bound commuters aboard. As the train rumbled down a shor hill between Prospect Park and Ebbets Field in the very heart of Brooklyn, the unthinkable happened: the motorman lost control and the train left the tracks as it curved into a tunnel at the foot of the hill. The ensuing disaster, known ever since as the Malbone Street Wreck, took the lives of almost a hundred people and stands as the worst mass-transit accident in U.S. History.

Unlike the Titanic disaster, however, the Malbone Street Wreck has received scant attention from scholars and historians over the years. As is so often the case, popular accounts of the tragedy have managed to enshrine as dogma thinkgs that are absolutely untrue.

Now, Fordham University Press is proud to present Brian J. Cudahy's long-awaited account of the Malbone Street Wreck, a book that recounts the events leading up to the disaster, describes the faithful trip from its beginning to end, and reviews efforts conducted after the tragedy to fix blame and establish liability.

Could the Malbone Stret Wreck have been avoided? Clearly yes, is Cudahy's answer. Had any number of factors not combined in precisely the way that they did, the five-car train might have well continued its journey to Brighton Beach in a completely uneventful manner.

But they did happen exactly as they happened, and that is why The Malbone Street Wreck makes such arresting reading. Could another Malbone Street Wreck happen at some future time in New York, or on any other U.S. Mass Transit System? Transit professionals will have to answer this question after they read Cudahy's account of how and why November 1, 1918 has become such an important day in transportation history.

Rails Under the Mighty Hudson tells a story that begins in the final years of the nineteenth century and reaches fulfillment in the first decade of the twentieth: namely, the building of rail tunnels under the Hudson River linking New Jersey and New York. These tunnels remain in service today-although one is temporarily out of service since its Manhattan terminal was under the World Trade Center-and are the only rail crossings of the Hudson in the metropolitan area.

Two of the tunnels were built by the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, a company headed by William Gibbs McAdoo, a man who later served as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and even mounted a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination at one point. McAdoo's H&M remains in service today as the PATH System of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The other tunnel was opened in 1910 by the Pennsylvania Railroad, led to the magnificent Penn Station on Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street, and remains in daily service today for both Amtrak and New Jersey Transit.

The author has updated this new edition with additional photographs, a concluding chapter on recent developments, and a Preface that recounts the last trains of September to the World Trade Center Terminal.

Fifty years ago—on April 26, 1956—the freighter Ideal X steamed from Berth 26 in Port Newark, New Jersey. Flying the flag of the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, she set out for Houston with an unusual cargo: 58 trailer trucks lashed to her top deck.

But they weren’t trucks—they were steel containers removed from their running gear, waiting to be lifted onto empty truck beds when Ideal X reached Texas. She docked safely, and a revolution was launched—not only in shipping, but in the way the world trades. Today, the more than 200 million containers shipped every year are the lifeblood of the new global economy. They sit stacked on thousands of “box boats” that grow more massive every year.

In this fascinating book, transportation expert Brian Cudahy provides a vivid, fast-paced account of the container-ship revolution—from the maiden voyage of the Ideal X to the entrepreneurial vision and technological breakthroughs that make it possible to ship more goods more cheaply than every before.

Cudahy tells this complex story easily, starting with Malcom McLean, Pan-Atlantic’s owner who first thought about loading his trucks on board. His line grew into the container giant Sea-Land Services, and Cudahy charts
its dramatic evolution into Maersk Sealand, the largest container line in the world. Along the way, he provides a concise, colorful history of world shipping—from freighter types to the fortunes of steamship lines—and explores the spectacular growth of global trade fueled by the mammoth ships and new seaborne lifelines connecting Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Masterful maritime history, Box Boats shows how fleets of these ungainly ships make the modern world possible—with both positive and negative effects. It’s also a tale of an historic home port, New York, where old piers lie silent while 40-foot steel boxes of toys and televisions come ashore by the thousands, across the bay in New Jersey.

How We Got to Coney Island is the definitive history of mass transportation in Brooklyn. Covering 150 years of extraordinary growth, Cudahy tells the complete story of the trolleys, street cars, steamboats, and railways that helped create New York’s largest borough---and the remarkable system that grew to connect the world’s most famous seaside resort with Brooklyn, New York City across the river, and, ultimately, the rest of the world. Includes tables, charts, photographs, and maps.

his colorful history will appeal to borth the interested reader and transportation historian. Brian Cudahy's skillful narrative is combined with a wealth of period photographs. The first comprehensive history of public transportation in North America to be published in more than 60 years, the book traces the grwoth of urban mass transit from the horse-drawn street cars of the 1830's through the development of cable cars, electric street cars, subways, and buses, to the new light rail systems that are playing a key role in today's urban transit renaissance. The book is not bound to any geographical region and examines transit rail systems throughout the United States and Canada.