[Beach's pneumatic subway, Broadway, N.Y.C.]: 73659 - Entrance to tunnel, with passenger car coming in; 73660 - Interior of the passenger car; 73661 - Advancing the shield - interior of the tunnel; 73662 - Testing the correctness of position at night – Historic Reproduction
![[Beach's pneumatic subway, Broadway, N.Y.C.]: 73659 - Entrance to tunnel, with passenger car coming in; 73660 - Interior of the passenger car; 73661 - Advancing the shield - interior of the tunnel; 73662 - Testing the correctness of position at night, 1870 — antique engraving](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/88/88ca54b4fff4-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
A window into the past: [Beach's pneumatic subway, Broadway, N.Y.C.]: 73659 - Entrance to tunnel, with passenger car coming in; 73660 - Interior of the passenger car; 73661 - Advancing the shield - interior of the tunnel; 73662 - Testing the correctness of position at night, preserved in this antique engraving. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
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[Beach's pneumatic subway, Broadway, N.Y.C.]: 73659 - Entrance to tunnel, with passenger car coming in; 73660 - Interior of the passenger car; 73661 - Advancing the shield - interior of the tunnel; 73662 - Testing the correctness of position at night
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Few urban transit projects of the 1870s were as unusual as Alfred Ely Beach's pneumatic subway, a short tunnel beneath Broadway in lower Manhattan where a car was pushed along by air pressure rather than a locomotive. This wood engraving, published in *Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper* in February 1870, is one of a four-part set showing the tunnel entrance with a passenger car, the car's interior, the tunneling shield advancing through the earth, and workers checking their alignment at night. Beach's line operated as a demonstration and was never extended, so these views document an experiment that went no further than this single tunnel.
| Created / published | 1870 |
|---|---|
| Medium | 1 print : wood engraving. |
| Notes | Title and other information transcribed from caption card. Illus. in: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, vol. 29, no. 751 (1870 Feb. 19), p. 381. Caption card tracings: Subways; B.I.; Geogr. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 1,536 × 1,257 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-146901 |
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