The success of
New York City as one of the leading world economic, cultural, and governmental
centres could be attributed to a number of things including the location and
geography of its harbour, the influx of immigrants hungry for opportunities and
possible prosperity, the favourable outcome of major political events in the
last couple of centuries. To me, however, New York’s prosperity is marked by
its forward thinking. The infamous grid was set up in the early nineteenth
century covering almost the entire island of Manhattan north of the
contemporary city limits. For more than a century the markers on corners of
planned streets stood solitary outside the growing city waiting for their time
to play. And eventually the city grew so much that the grid needed further
expansion into Inwood. Central Park was initially planned with the grid in 1811
and it still was not quite central in 1857 when it opened, but its designers
envisioned its eventual centrality within the city. Times Square, another NYC
icon, represents yet another leap of faith into the future. The New York Times
built their impressive new headquarters there in 1904, which was the second
tallest building in New York at the time, far away from Park Row, where all the
other major newspaper headquarters and skyscrapers resided. And while the New
York Herald, Tribune and World are all gone (together with their skyscrapers),
the Times is the largest local newspaper in the country. At the same time when
the Times moved to Midtown far from the centre of things, around the turn of
the century, Columbia University moved Uptown to its current main campus in
search for more space, and the first underground rapid transit system opened
serving the full length of Manhattan and Bronx.
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| Columbia University Morningside Height Campus in 1910 |
When Columbia
moved to Morningside Heights in 1897, the new campus did not have the urban
feeling that it does today. The Dakota Apartments, some 40 streets south of
campus, were so named because of their remoteness from the city. However, the
remoteness of the new Columbia campus was alleviated substantially quite soon
as in 1901 the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), which was one of the
three companies initially operating the NYC subway system and which merged in
the 1950s into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), started the construction
of it West Side line. On October 27, 1904 the first underground subway line in
New York opened from Times Square to 145th St with a stop on 116th
and Broadway right in front of Columbia University. As can be seen on the
photograph of 1910 here, the campus was still pretty much alone on top of the
hill. It could still look down upon the city, but it was now also connected to
it.
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| Three Miles of Broadway - Columbia University, 116th St, the IRT Station and Streetcars |
Columbia was
also serviced by the now defunct Broadway and Amsterdam Ave. streetcar line
operated by New York Railways, as can be seen in this photograph in 1911.
However, the streetcars did not live the long life of the subway and in 1936 they
were replaced by buses. The streetcar line seen in the picture is now serviced
by the M7 bus. One could only wonder why this not so densely populated area
needed two types of transport and moreover why the IRT invested both time and
money in the creation of the underground. The process was especially cumbersome
and included many difficulties along the way with one of the big challenges of
the project being the support of the Columbus Monument (Skinner 1902).
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| IRT West Line Construction 1901 |
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| IRT West Line Tunnel Construction at 118th St in 1902 |
When the West
Line opened in 1904, the 116th-Columbia was one of the very first
underground stations in New York. Its entrance was through the middle of
Broadway through an entry hall very similar to the one still remaining on 72nd
St and the junction between Amsterdam Ave and Broadway. The entry hall was in
used until 1967 when the current entrance stairways were built and the hall was
demolished.
 | |
| The entry hall on 116th and Broadway still in use in March, 1967 |
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| Construction of the new entrance of 116th-Columbia station in September 1967 |
The station
today keeps serving the university just like it did more than a hundred years
ago, but despite its obvious importance for the university’s link with the rest
of the city, it is not usually thought of as a prominent part of the campus
landscape. The station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 2004. It has been a part of the campus for longer than Butler Library or the
Law School and SIPA part of the campus. It joined the party just a year after
Alma Mater, yet I do not think that it is ever included on campus tours,
official or just the ones we give our friends when they visit. I wonder whether
things would have been different, should the entry hall have stood…or whether
it was different when it did? Is it the fact that it is underground and so not representing
the Columbian idea of the “Acropolis of America” that makes us overlook it? Or
is it that it is outside the gates and so not a part of the true campus? As it
looks now, the station lacks monumentality; it even lacks any reminder of its
historical significance. But it keeps getting the job done (as much as we want
to and could complain about the 1-train) for more than a century now and while
it is largely unnoticed, it is my reminder of that very essence of the New York
spirit that made the IRT take the gamble and dig those tunnels that are proving
so useful today when the city is actually dense all the way north into
Manhattanville and beyond into the Bronx. And as the campus will expand north,
it will still rely on that same leap of faith that was taken some hundred and
ten years ago.
References:
Frank W. Skinner,
1902 “Difficult
Engineering in the Subway.” Century
Magazine, Oct. 1902, pp. 908 – 911.
NYC Subway Web Site
1995 “IRT: The First Subway.” NYC Subway Web Site. http://www.nycsubway.org/irtsubway.html.
[Accessed on April 24, 2012.]
Photo Credits: George Eastman House
Collection, Michael V. Susi Collection, New York Transit Museum, Columbia
University Archives
4 comments:
This is a great post, Georgi, thanks! I never even thought about whether or not there might have been an above-ground station for the subway at 116th St, and it certainly doesn't feature prominently in my mental map of the campus area, but I would be very sad not to have it there. Has there been any kind of general city trend towards masking infrastructural elements like subway or bus stations? Except of course for those particularly visible examples that may be deemed historically significant and play a part in the publicized image of the city as well as being more central transportation hubs (I'm thinking like Penn Station, Grand Central, for instance)...anyway, was it a city decision, or did Columbia actually have an active role in the choice to demolish this station? Also, this makes me think of all the abandoned and lost subway stations in the city: http://www.nycsubway.org/abandsta.html; http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/jan/03/new-yorks-lost-subways. Obviously 116th St isn't abandoned, just mostly ignored, but it's interesting to watch how more and more interest is getting generated around the underground of the city, the hidden parts of the everyday.
As far as my understanding goes, Columbia had no part in the demolition of the entry hall. I don't really know the reason behind it...possibly the slight widening of Broadway and the elimination of the need to cross in order to get in the subway. I wasn't specifically thinking of the masking you are talking about, but I would stretch that into the way rapid transit systems in the US are made and later maintained. They are, as a whole, extremely dirty and quite unpleasant. And yet, I have never encountered one that works as well as the New York City Subway, so it is not a matter of quality really. There must be something in the automobile cult in this country that makes its people unconsciously (perhaps) overlooking public transportation...in both maintaining it and exerting due pride from it...
Your post made me think about how central is to consider the basic public services infrastructure when discussing about landscape. As you brilliantly pointed out, the fact that 116th street station was one of the first subway stations built in NY adds another interesting layer to explore how the interaction between power and symbolic representations transformed the Morningside Heights landscape.
The IRT and BMT subway companies were acquired by the City of NY and then merged with the IND into the New York City Subway System (under the Board of Transportation). In 1953, the subway was placed under the newly created New York City Transit Authority.
In 1968, the NYCTA was placed under the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (which is a state level agency),
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