Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1904-03-08
UNDERGROUND new YORK
A POPULoUS CITY OF Tol..ERs
WHO RARELY SEE THE GUN.
Extraordinary Development of Subter-
ranean Activities Following Upon
the increase of Skyscrapers With
Their Series of Sub-stories.


Unapparent to the eye a great I'm.
foreground city has developed in Man
hAttan-a city densely populated by
workers who rarely see the sunlight
1t is the city of the skyscraper base
ments, and extends downward to bed
rock, in some places below the sur
face af the East and North Rivers.
There, built among sunken caissons
and within coffer-dams of steel and
concrete, are three, four or FIVE
stories of the building lower than the
street.
A writer in the Worlds Work notes
that most Of the dwellers underground,
engineers, firemeE, oilers and other
employees. are nearly all men past
middle life
Crews Of from forty to sixty men
are repaired to operate the engineer
ing mechanism of the great Office
buildings. In the boiler and engine
rooms the force works in three shifts
of eight hours each. The early watch
begins at a. m. and ends at p. m,
when the late watch begins No man
leaves his post till he is relieved by
his successor. Each watch comprises
an engineer, an oiler, two firemen and
two coal-pasSers, and there is always
ready at hand if wanted a chief en-
gineer with his assistant The re-
mainder of the working force of the
building is composed of oilers Zone
for each four elevators), electricians,
plumbers, steamfitters, machinists,
carpenters, cabinet makers, masons,
plasterers, painters and cleaners.
They are comfortably housed and
surrounded by many appliances of lux
ury-tubs for bathing, shower baths,
dressing cabinets, marble hand-basins.
There is profusion of nickel and pol
ished steel and hardwood trimming
everything that might be asked for in
the most luxurious home.
Usually the building really works
only ten hours, and the night shift
is smaller than the day shift. In one
or two of the large hotels, where the
day overlaps the night and the night
merges with the day, there is no diff
ference. In the power-rooms of the
Waldorf-Astoria, three stories below
the street, $50 men are employed.
There, too, in winter 100 tons of coal
day are consumed in seven furnaces,
for hotel must keep itself warm at
every hour of the twenty-four. Fifty
tons of artificial ice are used daily
during the summer, and half thou
sand carafes of water chilled by the
ice-machine; 1000 pounds of meat,
fish and game are kept at freezing
temperature in the refrigerators.
Every drop of water consumed Ill
the underground city is filtered,
draughts of cool air fan the hot
breath of the furnace from the brow
of the coal HEAVIER In the basement
of the new Stock Exchange refriger-
ator device for supplying cold air and
tempering the hot wave to the perspir-
ing broker is said to be the perfection
of ventilating systems.
What is to be the ultimate develop
ment of New York below the pave
ment? Already stores along the sub
way are in prospective, while the
great subterraneous borings of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, with the
worlds largest passenger station to
be built more than half underground,
equipped with moving platforms and
stairways, and other projected sub
Ways to come, open up visions OF
city beneath city, of great buildings
connected underneath by tunnels, till
passage over wide areas may be &C
complished without the need of mount
to the surface. Perhaps in the New
York of another century much of the
heavy truck traffic will be carried on
underground, leaving the surface
streets to the pedestrian and the
light vehicles.