Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels

This was a very interesting and entertaining book about a herculean civil engineering project that I knew nothing about. In the style that David McCullough wrote "The Path Between the Seas", Ms. Jonnes makes the complex building of the tunnels and Pennsylvania Station easy yet fascinating to read. Besides the detail of the project, we also learn about the times and people who were behind the construction and the forces who made it difficult including the force of nature Plus, her command of vocabulary is excellent. I highly recommend "Conquering Gotham".

Much has been written about the lamentable loss of the original Penn Station in the 1960s. The majestic building's turn-of-the-century birth is less well known. Jill Jonnes tells this fascinating Gilded Age story in "Conquering Gotham." The Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the most powerful corporations of the time, had long been thwarted in its efforts to enter the New York market, being forced to ferry its passengers across the North (Hudson) River. Andrew Cassett, the PRR's visionary President, was determined to finally overcome the technical challenges posed by the mile-long river crossing and the equally formidable obstacles of New York's graft-infested Tammany politics. Fortune graced Cassett in the form of the election of the reform Mayor Seth Low in 1901. A dour, disagreeable man ("A politician can say `no' and win a friend," wrote journalist Lincoln Steffens. "Low can lose one by saying 'yes.'"), Low would serve only one term. But the two-year break in Tammany's City Hall stranglehold was window enough for Cassett to win approval for his plan without paying any "boodle." And an audacious plan it was: crossing the North River, burrowing under the City and then crossing the East River, in order to link the LIRR (PRR's subsidiary) directly to Manhattan. Most observers expected PRR to erect bridges to achieve the river crossings. Instead, Cassett's engineers elected to construct subaqueous tunnels - two under the North River and four beneath the East River. Tunnel construction was a harrowing proposition; the East River tunnels, in particular, were marred by several fatal mishaps. Even after completion, PRR's engineers were not sure the tunnels were safe enough to withstand the stresses of high-speed trains. Penn Station would be located in the heart of Manhattan's "Tenderloin" district, also known as "Satan's Circus," because of its rampant vice. Cassett's point man on the site assemblage was Douglas Robinson, brother-in-law to President Teddy Roosevelt, who set out to quietly buy up the bars, brothels, shops and tenement buildings on the cheap. However, PRR's intentions soon became public, and costs mounted. The hardest bargainer: the pastor of a Catholic church, who walked away with a half-million dollars and a more central location for his parish. Total cost for the assemblage: more than $5 million. Turn-of-the-century train stations were cathedrals of commerce. And in this regard, Charles McKim's Penn Station - inspired by the ancient Roman Empire -- set a new standard. McKim's masterpiece would guilt the Vanderbilts into building a new, more palatial Grand Central Terminal, the one we still admire today. McKim would not live to see the project finished. Neither would Cassett nor the LIRR's President William Baldwin (dead at 41). But the creation of these men and others - Penn Station and its tunnels - would transform Manhattan, sharply easing the dense overcrowding by making broadscale suburban commuting viable.

You do not need to be a railroad history fan to be captivated by this book, as this book delves into the gilded age of business in America as well as the monumental corruption of Tammany Hall and the aldermen in turn of the century New York. A great book on the Pennsylvania Railroad: it's leaders, planners and civil engineers and rank in file, arguably one of the greatest corporations in American history.

While reading Conquerimg Gotham by Jill Jones, I felt like I was back in the old neighborhood in New York. I grew up just north of the Tenderlion section, in Hell's Kitchen. Several things stand out in my mind after reading this excellent book: Alexander Cassat as President of the Pennzy, was such an honest and honorable man; New York City has lost a great civic monument; and this book has been an excellent trip into the past. The destruction of Pennsylvania Station has the feeling of being on the level of a national crime. Maybe one day a new station will arise on the site of the old. What a great and fascinating story. Thank you Jill Jones. From Hoss

This is a book that can be appreciated on many levels. First and foremost, it is the story of how the once mighty Pennsylvania Railroad brought East-West trains into Manhattan. Though it had become the greatest sea port in the nation, the country's financial and manufacturing hub, Manhattan had no terminal for East-West trains. The New York Central had its trains coming in from the north, but if you wanted to ride the train to Philadelphia and points west and south, you first had to take a boat across the Hudson River to New Jersey. For decades, the leaders of the Pennyslvania Railroad had tried to come up with a way to bring their trains into Manhattan. A bridge over the Hudson was designed and then abandoned for lack of financial support from other railroads. A brilliant visionary, Alexander Cassatt, as President of the Pennsylvania convinced the board of directors on a great gamble: to invest millions in the building of tunnels under the Hudson, erection of a great station in Manhattan and extending the tunnels across the Manhattan and the East River to Long Island. The stories are of the herculean engineering effort involved in designing and constructing the tunnels, since none that long had ever been attempted; the problems of dealing with the Democrat Party's corrupt Tammany political machine; the design and construction of the iconic Penn Station; Teddy Roosevelt's campaign against trusts and big business and more. In short, Jonnes's history is epic because her subjects are epic. Jonnes has a good writing style; she is able to breathe life into some relatively obscure subjects and does well at attempting to convey the nature of life in the early 20th Century. None of us will ever be able to visit Penn Station and appreciate that it was designed to be a monument, not a structure that was destroyed a mere half-century after it was built. Few of us will ever be able to appreciate just how important passenger railroads were at one time and fewer still will ever experience the thrill of cross-country travel on a first-class train. Probably none of us or very few will ever experience performing manual labor a hundred feet beneath the surface of a roiling river when labor relations were considered a matter strictly between the laborer and his employer. Jonnes does a marvelous job of bringing all this to a reasonable semblance of life. It is a wonderful history from a time when technologies we take for granted now were still new and men thought they could acheive anything and believed that the future would be a better place. Jerry

Jill Jonnes does a wonderful job of describing the long and difficult saga concerning the digging of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers, as well as the construction of old Pennsylvania Station in the middle of turn-of-the-century New York's infamous "Tenderloin" district. Very well-written and easy to read, she discusses the travails Alexander Cassatt and subsequent PRR presidents had in dealing with New York's Tammany Hall, the shifting muck and silt under the Hudson River, which at times threatened to doom the project, and a number of other issues related to an undertaking that was described as one of the world's greatest engineering feats. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in railroading, New York City, or the Pennsylvania Railroad in particular.