Did alligators ever really live in New York's sewers? What's it like to explore the old aqueducts beneath the city? How many levels are beneath Grand Central Station? And how exactly did the pneumatic tube system that New York's post offices used to employ work? In this richly illustrated historical tour of New York's vast underground systems, Julia Solis answers all these questions and much, much more. New York Underground takes readers through ingenious criminal escape routes, abandoned subway stations, and dark crypts beneath lower Manhattan to expose the city's basic anatomy. While the city is justly famous for what lies above ground, its underground passages are equally legendary and tell us just as much about how the city works.

The only guide you will ever need to travel around New York City by subway.From the theater district of trendy Manhattan to the quaint residential neighborhoods of Queens, every single station in the four boroughs has been researched to help you maneuver the system like a pro.Highly Informative and Resourceful, The Book's Highlight's Include:Noteworthy stations featuring the best in underground artThe best nearby restaurants for affordable, informal and ethnic diningInsightful historic information on the IND, BMT, and IRT transit linesA token rating scale that gives an honest assessment of each station'sDecorCleanlinessSafetySurrounding neighborhoodsNearby points of interest such as museums, theaters, parks and shoppingNew York City residents and visitors alike will find this comprehensive handbook indispensable for riding the mass transit rails.

Only a handful of transit workers, daring explorers and graffiti writers have experienced the full scope of the New York subway system. Beneath The Streets reveals this world for the first time with fantastic photographs captured from throughout the tunnels and byways of the subway. Although it provides service to over 5 million riders every day, the subway is for most a sealed system. Very few of its patrons are aware of the extent of this vast underground infrastructure. The authors of this important historical work first discovered this hidden world in the process of photographing graffiti found below ground in the subway system. Now their riveting documentary work opens up this subterranean maze, including 600 miles of active track as well as abandoned sections and disused stations, for all to experience.

But as it is in no other city on earth, the subway of New York is intimately woven into the fabric and identity of the city itself.

In the late nineteenth century, as cities like Boston and New York grew more congested, the streets became clogged with plodding, horse-drawn carts. When the great blizzard of 1888 crippled the entire northeast, a solution had to be found. Two brothers from one of the nation's great families-Henry Melville Whitney of Boston and William Collins Whitney of New York-pursued the dream of his city digging America's first subway, and the great race was on. The competition between Boston and New York played out in an era not unlike our own, one of economic upheaval, life-changing innovations, class warfare, bitter political tensions, and the question of America's place in the world.The Race Underground is peopled with the famous, like Boss Tweed, Grover Cleveland and Thomas Edison, and the not-so-famous, from brilliant engineers to the countless "sandhogs" who shoveled, hoisted and blasted their way into the earth's crust, sometimes losing their lives in the construction of the tunnels. Doug Most chronicles the science of the subway, looks at the centuries of fears people overcame about traveling underground and tells a story as exciting as any ever ripped from the pages of U.S. history. The Race Underground is a great American saga of two rival American cities, their rich, powerful and sometimes corrupt interests, and an invention that changed the lives of millions.

Explores artistic production surrounding the world's most famous public transportation system, from just before its opening in 1904 onwards. Using images, this work offers perspectives on ways in which the subway has been used as a subject about which to make art, as a site within which to make art, and as a canvas upon which to make art.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Subway Stories -- 1. Forming the Subway Habit -- 2. How the Subway became Sublime -- 3. Minding the Gaps in Modernist Poetry -- 4. Underground Assimilation in Ethnic Drama -- 5. Uncanny Migration Narratives -- Conclusion: The Private Subway in the Postmodern City -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- About the Author -- Back Cover.