The New York Rapid-transit Subway

58 DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. [Minutes of Sir William from that section, which was the approach to the decline that White. led down to the tunnel under the East River to Brooklyn, they had the opportunity of going right out to the north end of Manhattan, and there seeing the other extreme of the work, where the rapid-transit line, called a subway, developed into a succession of viaducts, and passed through some interesting and striking scenery. Throughout the work he thought the general impression made on the minds of the party was that although they were told there was a standard method of con- struction—and for certain lengths that was true—yet there was almost infinite variety in the methods by which local conditions were met. Another thing which was remarked to him on many occasions by railway-engineers of the party was the freedom witli which the engineers of the subway could work—a freedom vastly greater than would be possible under existing conditions in England: he referred to some of the arrangements in the stations and not in the subway proper. In the positions chosen for support- ing-pillars in relation to the edges of the platforms, and in many other ways, regulations which were regarded as absolute in this country were certainly not conformed to in New York; and, so far as he had been able to learn, the departure from what were con- sidered essential conditions here had not been accompanied there by any particular injury to life or limb. But that was not all; that was only on the engineering side. The conditions of construction in New York, as compared with the conditions in England, had differed in other ways, which were important as influencing tlie cost. There was a very interesting statement on p. 34, where the Author said: “House-vaults were held not to be property, but only a revocable licence from the city. The owners therefore received as compensation only the price paid originally to the city for the right of use. A few instances dated back to colonial and early times, when the original price was stated in bushels of wheat. The city repaid not in kind but in market value of the grain on the date of settlement.” He wondered what would be said in England if a proposal of that kind were made. He remembered many years ago a proposal, which Sir John Wolfe Barry would recollect, to make a sub-surface line down Oxford Street, very closely resembling what had been carried out on a much larger scale in New York. He remembered the drawings quite well, and also the corre- spondence that took place in the newspapers, when the shopkeepers in Oxford Street rose in revolt, and said this thing should never be, because customers would be driven away while such a work was in the course of construction. The project would have been an