Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1906-12-31
How Broadway Will Usher
in the Year 1907.
The Great Engineering Work
Underneath the City.
An Italian 1etective...An Anti.Race
Suicide Plan,

"" ioIh, Zee. oU.--NcW Years III
New YORK will be q Roman festival
such as the ancient city by the Tiber
never saw III all its centuries of mag
nllicenSe. This year the Great White
way Is making preparations for q ceIe-
hrat!on that will lee Il wonder even a.
ITSELF. For two weeks every table in
every popular resort in the lobster belt
iaS been reserved for the incvitahl.
SUPPER at prices ranging from s. ~
- IL seat, and that takes no account of
the many dollars that viii be Spent in
olher ways after the game is on. IL
is estimated that 10000 people will par
take of the feast in that gilded mile Ct
broadway. beside which all the rest
OF the world seems tame and uninter-
estIng on New Years Eve. Enough
food will be eaten or wasted to feed an
army for week, and the champagne
consumed would float a battleship.
The section in which the celebration
Will be most strenuous extends from
IWenty-tilird street 10 Forty-eighth
street and reaches its climax at Long
acre Square, into which, after the
theatres are out, broadway, Seventh
Avenue, Forty-SecOnd and Forty-four-
Tn street pour an army of jewellers and
sisht-scors. Around the square are
ranged the famous restaurants and ho-
tells where the run will be most up
rOariouS. BY virtue of its size, the
Hotel Aston will accommodate the
largest number-betWeen 1900 and q
600. SO great has been the demand
for places that the capacity of the reg
ular dlring rooms and cafes was eX-
CeeGed long ago, and all sorts of make
shift preparations have been made to
accommodate the overflow in ball
rooms and parlors.
When the SavantS of a future age
unearth from the debris OF some gi-
Santic cataclysm OF nature what is
now going on at the bottom of New
York, and survey the tremendous en-
gineering featS to which the inha bit
| ants were driven to secure refuge frOrl
the ferocious trolleydactyl. the hippo
tOmobile, the autohornoSaurus, ana
other savage mechanical beasts which
| infested the island of Manhattan in the
early part of the Twentieth Century.
| the speculatlOns oCcasiOned thereby
will make. interesting eaveSdropping
for such ghosts as have found their
way back to earth. An underriver
passage to Brooklyn, as well as one to
| New Jersey, is now an accomplished
| fact. Under Ninth Avenue there is in
process of construction for the Penn
| Sylvania tunnel. % feet beneath the
| curb line. a massive steel bridge de-
signed to support not only the street
| above it, but the elevated railroad
| structure as well. While the work of
| building this bridge is going on, the
| rush of traffic at and above the sur
face goes on undiStarbed. 1t has been
| found necessary TO support the street
! for Il distance Of AGO feet between
Thirty-iirst and Thirty-thrd streets,
and for this purpose "a enormous steel
| Orders, each 81 feet long and weigh
ing ten tons, We're bought for temper
airy use On this part of the work. The
latest remarkable scheme is n double
| deckcd subway under lexington AV-
| cnue the express tracks beneath and
F! the local tracks above. where the street
! is TOO narrow to accommodate four
| tracks on the same level. There is n
project afoot to install in this tunnel
| the new Behr mOnorail, which affords
| n possible speed of more than 100 miles
an hour In some places the lower
tracks will be nearly 100 feet below the
surface of the street. Altogether the
bottom of New York is getting to be
Il good ways from the top.