Mr. Pivner as Above so Below with Lewis Mumford's The City in History & The WPA Guide to NYC

[alice wellintown]

from _The WPA Guide to NYC_ "Subways and Els"


These intent and humorless hordes cover uptown and downtown platforms,
choke narrow stairways, swamp change-booths, wrestle with closing
train doors. Crowds well up from the Queens trains on the lower subway
level by way of elevators, escalators, stairways, and graded
corridors. Nickels jingle, signal bells clang, turnstiles bang until
the faint thunder of footsteps on the wooden passageway connecting the
Lexington Avenue lines with the Times Square-Grand Central shuttle
sounds human and restful. And through it all trains arrive and depart,
delivering and removing crowds, lifting gum-papers and clouds of dust,
and jarring the sidewalks, buildings, and windows of the city above.
Beneath the sidewalks of New York the subways have created a second
city. Some of the thoroughfares between the turnstiles and the streets
have lunch counters, barbershops, shoeshine stands, florist shops,
phone booths. Through the use of these facilities the New Yorker could
live a rather rounded life without once venturing into the street. He
could, for example, stay at the Commodore Hotel, transact business in
the Chrysler Building, dine at the Cafe Savarin, shop at
Bloomingdale's, swim in the indoor pool at the Hotel St. George in
Brooklyn, see a movie at the Rialto Theatre and, if romance came his
way, marry at the Municipal Building. A few of the homeless use the
subway as a flophouse and during the worst winters of the 1930's large
numbers of unemployed lived here for days.
[…]
With the exception of a few attractive stations, the subways are drab
and noisy. Proposals that WPA artists and sculptors decorate the walls
of the city-owned stations have been considered. Meanwhile, the
romance of the subways of New York may be found in their trajectories,
and in the intricacy of their construction and operation.
[…]
Despite the prevalent idea that "the subway yawns the quickest promise
home," the speed of the el is substantially the same as that of the
subway. But the el's advantage lies in its rambling trajectory,
replete with images of New York which the subway journey (except in
brief aerial excursions) lacks. From the vantage point of a window
seat, one surveys the slums of Harlem, Ninth Avenue, and the East
Side; middle-class Tudor City, Chinatown, and the Bowery; the German
and Bohemian quarters of Yorkville ; the Wall Street district ; the
flat suburban reaches of Brooklyn ; the hilly jumble of the Bronx; and
the quiet tree-shaded streets of Queens. Dingy sweatshops, flophouses,
dramatic family groups pass in succession. So, too, do scenes of great
beauty: skyscrapers at dusk, glittering rivers, dwindling streets.
[…]
The maintenance of this vast transportation network requires an
organization of unprecedented scope and perfection. Engineers,
trackmen, motormen, conductors, dispatchers, mechanics, porters,
change-makers, and platform guards more than 27,000 employees are all
part of the unified scheme. Behind the scenes work those responsible
for fundamental transit operations. And still more anonymous, and more
numerous, are the inanimate servants: signal and safety devices,
checks, trippers, and switches.
[…]
Minor adventures are not infrequent. Strangers get lost in the maze of
stations and transit lines, although maps are conspicuously posted in
cars and on platforms, and New Yorkers vouchsafe information (at times
somewhat incomprehensibly). A small boy, avid for adventure, may set
out on a journey to the Bad Lands, and arrive at New Lots Avenue,
Brooklyn (which is not bad at all). Or a honeymooning couple, visiting
the big town, may be swept apart by the rush of crowds and, as once
reported, spend several hours of horrible anxiety before being
reunited by the police.
Greater drama resides in the endless flow of activity that crowds the
cars and platforms. Beggars, singers, banjo-players, and
candy-butchers vie for a few pennies, howl bargains, or stumble
silently past the apathetic passengers. Occasionally, a particularly
bright singing troupe or an unusually pathetic cripple will meet with
warm response. At large stations, pitchmen attract crowds with
infinite ease, and disappear before the greenhorn realizes he has been
duped.
The five-cent fare a recurring issue in municipal politics is not
likely to be increased in the immediate or distant future. The New
Yorker is extremely sensitive on this point.