The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-09-06
In New York
By PAUL HARRISON

New York.-Seeing the bronze ia blet in the subway station at City
 Hall, marking the First New York Rapid Transit" and dated 1900, set me to wondering about some other pioneers of metropolitan progress. Maybe there'd be a story in the first taxicab, the first apartment house, and so on....
 One of the first things 1 discoy- cred was that the subway marker errs by margin of 27 years. The nrst subway in New York, and the world, for that matter, was built in 1873. True, 1t didn't go much of anywhere, and wasn't financially successful. But for that matter, the big, crowded lines of to-day all are having money trouble. City fathers in the simple Sev. cnties were ag4last at the idea of putting railroads underground.
 Streets would collapse and build lLgs would fall into them. and that was that. So some engineers rent ed a cellar at the corner of Broad way and Warren street and secret ly dug a tunnel 250 feet south to Murray street. In four months they had installed tracks, single small car, steam engine, at one end to pull the car back and forth by> cable, and a telegraph sys- tenn between the two stations. which were within easy shouting distance of each other.
 People fiocked to see the inno- vation, but they were afraid of 1t. So were city officials. The line wasn't granted a franchise, and it never went any farther under the sidewalks of New York.
 Getting Even on Cabby
 The first taxicabs were more of a success. So much so, in fact,
 that the promoter. Harry N. Allen.
 made a fortune. and Is still around
 here in pleasant retirement. Ho
 was moneyed man even back in
 1907, yet he didn't relish the exor-
 bitant rates cabbies were charging
 in those days. One night after q
 gay party he took girl home in a
 hanson. The rice was only a few
 blocks. but the driver said the fare
 would be S5.
 Allen offered to fight, but a po-
 liceman made him pay. Next
 morning, still breeding, Alley went
 around to some friends and bor-
 rowed a million dollars. Next he
 bought fleet of Darracq automo-
 piles. painted them bright red, and
 installed some gadgets which
 would record the distance travelled.
 Incidentally he coined and copy
 lighted the word "taxicab," formed
 from "motorcab" and tax meter"
 By autumn of 1907 the New York Taxicab company, was ready for business. Drivers of horse. cabs were frantic because people stood in line at the restaurant < and hotels waiting for the ,taxis 10 discharge their passengers and
 come back for more. Books of tickets were issued, and the big spenders of Broadway bought them by the dozens as gifts for chorus girls. In no time at all Allen had TOO cars on the streets of Manhattan. and complete re- venege against the hanson cabby
 who'd overcharged him.
 Oldest Apartment New York has had tenements
 for century, but apartments for OHiy ADOuls ~ years. LaHQIOEuh always had the idea that nice peo-
 pie wouldn't live under the same
 roof with other families, no mat ter what the conveniences or the l privacy. sft.~ , .i It was a man named Rutherford Stuyvesant who built the first apartment. He had seen well-to- do families living under the same
 roof in Paris. and figured that
 New Workers might like the plan.
 He was right: after the first few
 weeks the house didn't have va cancy for half a century.
 It's still standing. a fve-story
 building with seventeen apart
 ments. on East Eighteenth street. And it's still pretty well occupied,
 though modernization cost 1t two or three old-time tenants. A Mrs
 Martha Bishop has lived there 5S years and still uses the gas lights,
 which were left in at her request.