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Our First Subway Was Much Nicer

26th February 1870: Passengers on board America's first passenger subway train, a pneumatic train under Broadway, New York, built by the Beach Pneumatic Transit Co. as an experimental section. The line extended from a sub-basement at the corner of Warren Street to Murray Street. (Getty Images)


26th February 1870: Passengers on board America's first passenger subway train, a pneumatic train under Broadway, New York, built by the Beach Pneumatic Transit Co. as an experimental section. The line extended from a sub-basement at the corner of Warren Street to Murray Street. (Getty Images)


General plan, showing the arrangement of the machinery, the air-flue, the tunnel, and the mode of operating the pneumatic passenger-car. (Courtesy of the NYPL)



(Courtesy of the NYPL)


Illustrated description of the Broadway underground railway, with explanatory details and engravings of the atmospheric machinery, pneumatic passenger-car, pneumatic postal dispatch, underground tunneling machine, etc. (Courtesy of the NYPL)


New post office & proposed Broadway underground railway. (Courtesy of the NYPL)