Conquering Gotham Read online

  As Gotham suffered through the miserable days of a “hot wave” in late June 1901, Alexander Cassatt busied himself with financiers and railroad officers, pushing forward the North River Bridge project. “The Pennsylvania Railroad,” confided one anonymous financier to the New York Times, “is bound to have this bridge built. It has decided that it needs an entrance, and it is going to have it. It is not satisfied with its terminals in Jersey, and it is not going to stay there. It has made up its mind to this effect, and when the Pennsylvania undertakes to do a thing it always does it.” Cassatt believed that persuading the other roads would not be too difficult. In the previous year, ninety million passengers crossed from New Jersey on ferries, almost forty million of those on the PRR’s boats. And the city and nation were still growing like Topsy. President William McKinley had been handily reelected and the country was riding a wave of unprecedented prosperity.

  By Monday July 1, the “hot wave” had become so scorching and relentless it had vanquished Manhattan’s legendary energy. At dawn in the tenement districts, entire families slept inert on every fire escape and sidewalk. The greensward of the Battery, with its tiny harbor breezes, was solid with splayed, prostrate figures, reminiscent of a Civil War battlefield. By two o’clock that afternoon the thermometer in Herald Square hit a record-breaking 108 degrees, and heat “devils” shimmered up from the broiling cobblestones. By Monday night, eighty-seven people had died from the heat. On the streets, dead horses gathered flies. By Tuesday morning, the “heat was so intense,” reported the New York Times, “that the entire city was as if paralyzed. Many big companies and wholesale houses closed their doors as early as noon.” That night another two hundred souls died. Finally, the next day, violent thunderstorms swept through Gotham, refreshing the spent city with its torrents, followed by a steady drizzle that cooled the night.

  Cassatt and Gustav Lindenthal resumed their meetings and by early July 1901, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that “all the trunk lines terminating in New Jersey, opposite New York City” were considering the North River Bridge into Manhattan. It was a complete surprise to the public that the Vanderbilts would participate. In fact, the sums to be raised were so gigantic the wealthy Vanderbilts were critical. Lindenthal wrote Cassatt in one memo that “the financial syndicate [would include] the names of Vanderbilt and his followers. Your Company and the New York Central taking the lead, it was expected that all the other railroads in New Jersey would willingly come in with their quota of cars under the proposed agreement.”

  As was its conservative wont, the PRR had as yet made no formal public announcement that it was committed to Gustav Lindenthal’s bridge, but all kinds of rumors bubbled up as Alexander Cassatt pressed forward at full speed. The North River Bridge into Gotham was shaping up to be the nation’s largest and most important civil engineering project since the building of the transcontinental railroads. Moreover, Alexander Cassatt’s vision had grown even more ambitious. The previous May, the PRR had beaten out the Vanderbilts to acquire the Long Island Rail Road, a small commuter road active mainly in the summer. Cassatt coveted its large rail yards on the New York waterfront and viewed the LIRR as a key link in the PRR’s eventual all-important access to New England. Cassatt also intended to bring the LIRR lines physically into Manhattan and the LIRR’s previous president, Austin Corbin, had had plans underway for tunnels under the East River, until his sudden death in mid-1896 in a carriage accident at Newport.

  His successor, the handsome, young William H. Baldwin Jr., was equally ambitious. President Charles Francis Adams had hired Baldwin straight out of Harvard in 1886 to work with him at the Union Pacific, a railroad which was then “in bad repute, loaded with obligations, [and] odious in the territory it served.” In a business peopled largely by what Adams called “a coarse, realistic, bargaining crowd,” Baldwin stood out. Not only was he a “practical” businessman who loved to make money, “he was the soul of chivalry, of honor, and of moral courage.” He looked the part, with a clear mien, a high-domed forehead, deep-set, intense dark eyes, a thick moustache, and dimpled chin. Men marveled at Baldwin’s combination of manly charm and warmth, railroad savvy, and sterling personal qualities.

  So swift was Baldwin’s rise in the rough-and-tumble railway profession that he became president of the Long Island Rail Road when just thirty-three. Already, in his brief tenure he had sufficiently improved the road that the trip into Manhattan (or to the road’s ferry terminal into Manhattan) had been shortened by a half hour. Baldwin was also pushing forward the plans to build tunnels under the East River from the LIRR’s Flatbush station in Brooklyn to New York’s East Side. He was more than delighted to find that the mighty PRR coveted the LIRR and its extensive holdings along the East River, where “freight depots, yards for carload deliveries, and coal and lumber yards can be conveniently located.” Yet even under Baldwin, the LIRR still lagged far behind PRR standards.

  When the PRR added the LIRR to its empire in May 1900, Cassatt gained in Baldwin an invaluable and well-connected ally. Adams once observed that Baldwin had “quite a remarkable faculty for getting on with men.” So much so that Baldwin was already a Gotham insider, well versed in the complexities of New York’s local power brokers, its grafting bosses, and politicos. But he was also that most curious of beings—an influential railroad executive who was also a passionate reformer. His few years running roads in the Jim Crow South opened his sympathetic eyes to the wretched plight of American blacks. In 1895, just before coming to the LIRR, Baldwin had joined the board of Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, which offered Negroes a practical college education. Since then, Baldwin and Washington had become quite close as Baldwin dedicated himself to this difficult and wrenching cause. A typical Baldwin missive to the black leader in the fall of 1899 declared, “I just want to write a line to tell you that my mind and my heart are constantly on you and your work.”

  Thus, it was hardly surprising that William Baldwin had also become swept up in 1900 in the great Gotham reform movement to somehow root out the worst excesses of a vast and proliferating web of Tammany-protected prostitution (the “social evil” as it was genteelly termed). Harlotry was as old as the hills, but Tammany Hall’s tightly controlled police force was so actively promoting and protecting the oldest profession that prostitutes were infesting and corrupting new neighborhoods with impunity. “That an army of strumpets,” complained one reformer, “should be allowed to carry on the calling in the midst of a defense-less home-life thronged with children, was a thing too odious for any community to tolerate.”

  By November 1900, Baldwin had emerged as the activist head of the Committee of Fifteen, a high-profile group of influential men determined to force some kind of exposé and action. Many people admired Baldwin, who showed no “fear of ridicule, no dread of interference with his own business interests, no thought of possible adverse criticism…He knew not only how to initiate and to decide, but how to listen, to compare, and to conclude.” Predictably, there was far more press in 1901 about Baldwin, the doings of the Committee of Fifteen, and its pursuit of vice than there was about the Pennsylvania Railroad and its intended entry into Gotham.

  What Cassatt, Samuel Rea, and Lindenthal now began to learn—to their deepest dismay—was that the other railroads were not willingly signing on to their grand plan. George F. Baer, president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, pointed out that his road’s net annual profit was only $214,000. “You see how impossible it is for the Central to undertake to pay $800,000 a year [its share], or even one-third that sum, to the Bridge Company…Whatever advantage this bridge might be to companies having a long haul, it is absolutely impracticable for this company.” As for the other companies, while the Erie and the Baltimore & Ohio “appear willing to use the bridge on some terms,” it turned out that it would not bother them so very much if their passengers still had to herd on to ferries to reach New York. After all, had they not done this for years to no great ill effect?

 
The Vanderbilts, who had been inclined to join in when universal participation looked like a sure thing, now balked. Indeed, why should the Vanderbilts put up tens of millions of precious capital to help their greatest rival steam right into the heart of Gotham and all its riches? It made more sense to sabotage the enterprise to their own lasting advantage, and they duly informed Cassatt of their opposition. As for the other major lines marooned on the Jersey shore across from Manhattan—the Erie, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the Lehigh Valley, the New Jersey Central, the New York, Susquehanna & Western—they seemed convinced that Cassatt and the PRR might well build the federally chartered bridge, that by law had to be open to all roads, with them or without them, so why should they pay a penny in advance? As a highly irate Samuel Rea explained, “If the Pennsylvania R.R. desired to secure such a terminus it would alone have to stand behind it financially, and, when consummated, admit others to its advantages who had not aided in its promotion. This was unfair.”

  In early July 1901, Cassatt, soon to sail for Europe, once more wired the president of the New Haven line, “I should very much like to know before leaving whether you have come to any conclusion as to joining us in the building of the bridge lines, so that instruction may be given to acquire the charter.” The New Haven was no more inclined to help the PRR than was the New York Central. “Matters were, therefore, at a standstill,” wrote Rea. “The inability to carry out the bridge scheme was a severe disappointment.” To say the least.

  SIX

  “IT MIGHT OFFER THE SOLUTION”

  On Wednesday July 10, 1901, the heat was already building when Alexander Cassatt, his wife, Lois, and granddaughter, young Lois, made their way through yelling teamsters and newsboys to board the S.S. Cymric at the White Star Line’s West Side Pier 48, departing Gotham at noon for Liverpool. Once again, Cassatt found the PRR stymied, its North River Bridge project blocked. The ragged newsboys were hollering about the latest Tammany imbroglio, the “Park Pay Chair Riots.” The day before, Tammany’s park commissioner had tried to impose the longtime European custom of making people pay for the right to sit in park chairs. But this was democratic Gotham in the grip of yet another “hot wave” and when the fee collectors fanned out amidst the cool sylvan lawns and towering shade trees of Madison Square Park, they were met by vehement resistance, fisticuffs, and violent melees.

  Explained the New York Times, “To the great majority of visitors to the parks, and not merely to the hoodlums and the tramps, it was intolerable that a distinction should be made…between ‘first-class’ and ‘second-class.’” Worse was the dark suspicion that it was yet another outrageous Tammany rake-off, charging weary citizens to sit down in their own parks! In the name of democracy and civic peace, the pay chairs became free to all that very day.

  When the Cassatts steamed gratefully out of New York harbor and the heat to “cross the pond,” they were sophisticated veterans of what had become a great Gilded Age ritual, the mass migration of Americans to the cultured precincts of England and Europe for leisurely tours. The Cassatts lingered for a week at Claridge’s in London, and then crossed the Channel to Paris to visit Mary, now an established artist with a talent for capturing quiet domestic moments. Both their parents and Lydia were dead, and Mary spent her summers at her château, Beaufresne, in Mesnil-Theribus, fifty miles northwest of Paris. She gardened and painted, attended by her maid, her little Belgian Griffon, and occasional guests.

  Alexander and Lois Cassatt stayed as usual at the luxurious Hôtel Castiglione in the elegant quartier just south of the Place Vendôme. Years earlier, there had been an unfortunate episode of a James Whistler portrait of Lois. Mary liked it, writing at the time, “After all it is a work of Art, & as young [John Singer] Sargent said to Mother this afternoon, it is a good thing to have a portrait by Whistler in the family.” Moreover, she reminded, “I recommended Renoir, but neither you nor Aleck liked what you saw of his; I think Whistler’s portrait very fine.” Lois did not, and this disagreement was yet another strain in their relationship.

  The Gare du Quai d’Orsay.

  For Alexander, this European trip was both business and pleasure, for he was meeting with bankers in France and Germany to discuss raising the many tens of millions in loans the Pennsylvania Railroad needed for its vast expansion. After a sojourn to Hamburg, the Cassatts returned on Tuesday August 20 to Paris and the Hôtel Castiglione. Each day, Cassatt’s assistant, William Patton, dispatched a brief cable from Broad Street Station, advising his boss of conditions back home. In early August, Patton wired a perfunctory, “Business very good on road.” In mid-August, he reported a steel strike had started in Pittsburgh, but reassured, “No disorder; strike not spreading.”

  In that third week of August, the PRR president heard a knock at the door of his Paris hotel suite. He was handed a cable from Samuel Rea, who was as frustrated as Cassatt over the North River Bridge project. “The inability to carry out the bridge scheme was a severe disappointment to me as well as to its other advocates,” Rea would recall many years later, “because at that time I believed it was the best proposition, but I realized that if we were ever to build into New York we must do it alone, as we could not get a bridge scheme authorized for any one company.” Rea had had a new idea. In his telegram, he urged Cassatt to inspect the new Quai d’Orsay Station on the Seine across the river from the Tuileries and the Louvre. This railway terminal, opened in time for the great Paris Exposition of 1900, was a glorious Beaux Arts palace with the actual train station discreetly below ground. Built by the Orleans Line, it served all the trains coming up from the fertile environs of Bordeaux, Poitiers, and Toulouse. Now Rea was starting to think tunnels and wanted Cassatt to think about them, too.

  And so on a breezy August day, with clouds sailing across the Paris sky, Cassatt headed over toward the Left Bank to examine the white limestone Gare du Quai d’Orsay, widely acclaimed as a triumph of public architecture. Designed by Victor Laloux, monumental in size, its seven giant arched entry arcades were splendidly framed on each end by a handsome pavilion and clock tower. A tall, sloped mansard roof acknowledged the Louvre just across the river. The facade was profusely ornamented with sculptures and embellishments—lion’s heads, oak branches, laurel leaves.

  Here was a depot truly worthy of its prominent location in the historic heart of (once) royal Paris. This industrial palace that elegantly integrated the all-important railway into the city’s fabric, was only possible because the trains operated on electricity and so could use long riverside tunnels. Consequently this magnificent and useful monument to the new century was a distinct break with the familiar domed glass train shed terminal, semi-open, permeated by coal smoke and echoing with noise. The Gare du Quai d’Orsay was a striking marriage of art and industry, the first modern station designed for electric traction. Voyagers descended downstairs to one of fifteen train track platforms, first putting their baggage on moving ramps. “The station is superb,” wrote one artist. Attached to the terminal was a luxurious 370-room hotel.

  Cassatt watched powerful electrified forty-five-ton locomotives—oddly shaped engines called “salt boxes”—pull three-hundred-ton passenger cars through a long tunnel paralleling the Seine River and into the train terminal. Could this be the solution? With such powerful electric locomotives the PRR could enter Manhattan under the Hudson River with multiple tunnels solely for its own use. Likewise, the Pennsylvania could build its own magnificent terminal, just for its passengers and those of the Long Island Rail Road, whose tunnels would come under the East River and Manhattan.

  Cassatt, the trained engineer and lifelong railroad man, methodically inspected every aspect of the Gare du Quai D’Orsay system, his excitement rising. If there could not be a North River Bridge, there perhaps could be tunnels. Cassatt immediately cabled Rea back that “he was much impressed with it, and he believed it might offer the solution to our problem.” The fundamental engineering question was, Could tunnels be built under the Hudson River that could sta
nd up to the gigantic tonnage of PRR passenger trains? If so, Cassatt’s road could certainly build its own terminal. Let the others cling to their New Jersey depots and ferry fleets and be damned!

  Why had it taken Rea and Cassatt more than a year to discover this important French advance in electric traction? After all, the Quai d’Orsay terminal had opened for business in May 1900 to serve the marvelous Exposition Universelle. Cassatt had even been in Paris the previous summer, for one of his sons had been an American commissioner at the exposition. Now the fairgrounds were closed, the huge exhibition halls empty and forlorn, and Cassatt was suddenly discovering the electrified tunnels. One can only speculate that Cassatt and Rea had been so certain about the North River Bridge and so committed to that imposing vision that they didn’t consider other solutions. As Rea himself, long an officer of the bridge company, would later say of the North River Bridge, “I believed it was the best proposition.” But with the bridge at a stalemate, Rea explained, “It was my duty to support the tunnel scheme provided it was feasible.”

  As ever, Cassatt wasted no time. He already knew just whom he needed if he was on to tunnels—Charles Jacobs, the dashing Englishman and tunnel mastermind. And Cassatt also knew that Jacobs was right then over in London. By August 27 Cassatt had crossed the Channel in rainy weather, checked into Claridge’s, and located Jacobs, already under a PRR contract for the proposed LIRR tunnels from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Jacobs, fifty-one, was a powerful and charismatic marine engineer, a distinctive and authoritative figure with a large bald head, brilliant blue eyes, and a luxuriant white handlebar mustache. A native of Wales, he had really made his name in tunnels while working in the United States.

  Back in 1893, LIRR president Austin Corbin had hired Jacobs to build two big natural gas tunnels from Ravenswood, Queens, to Manhattan under the East River. Surveys showed the riverbed to be solid rock, and so it was quite a shock when the shaft was sunk to find thick fissures of soft, oozy mud. Then, not just river water but an army of crabs invaded one tunnel, causing the laborers to flee in panic. The contractors demanded the shaft be sunk fifty feet deeper. Jacobs, the engineer, disagreed. The natural gas company dismissed the contractors, and Jacobs took over the job, saying, “Give me a plant and workmen and I’ll put it through myself.” The outraged contractors went to court, calling experts to testify the tunnels were not feasible. When Jacobs came to the witness stand in 1894, he suggested the judge see the now completed tunnels for himself.