page_title: James Bowen (railroad executive)
section_title: Golden opportunity thrown away
hierarchical_section_title: James Bowen (railroad executive) / Work / Golden opportunity thrown away
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Harlaem Rail Road extended, 1840, showing planned connection with New York and Erie Railroad
context_page_description: James Bowen was an American railroad executive, President of Erie Railroad, who served as a Union Army general during the American Civil War.
context_section_description: April 25, 1831, almost a year to a day before the corporation that became the New York and Erie Railroad Company was chartered, the New York and Harlem Railroad Company was granted letters of incorporation, with authority to construct a single or double track railway:
  "...from any point on the north bounds of Twenty-third Street to any point on the Harlem River, between the east bounds of the Third Avenue and the west bounds of Eighth Avenue, with a branch to Hudson River, between 124th Street and the north bounds of 129th Street."
  April 6, 1832, the charter was amended to authorize the company, with permission of the authorities of New York City, to extend its railroad "along the Fourth Avenue to Fourteenth Street." May 12, 1836, the company was authorized to unite with any railroad or canal company organized under the laws of New York State, for the purpose of constructing a railroad, at any point which the directors of the two companies might agree upon. Subsequent legislation empowered the company to extend its railroad to the City Hall. May 7, 1840, the company was authorized to extend its railroad from the Harlem River through the County of Westchester to a point of intersection with the proposed New York and Albany Railroad. The company was also authorized to build a drawbridge across the Harlem River.
  At the session of the New York Legislature for 1841, the New York and Harlem Railroad Company was a petitioner for the aid of the State to the amount of $350,000, by the issue of State stock at six per cent, interest, payable in five years, to enable the company to continue its work; the railroad being then in operation from the City Hall in New York to Fordham, a distance of thirteen miles. To influence feeling in its favor the company laid particular stress on the fact that by this concession a communication by rail between New York and Albany would be greatly hastened. This petition was presented to the Legislature, January 26, and was referred to the Senate Committee on Railroads. The application was refused.
  At this time work on the Erie was at the height of its activity. Eleazar Lord was President of the Company. The President of the New York and Harlem Railroad was Samuel R. Brooks. He seems to have been a far-seeing man and a practical one. The New York and Albans - Railroad scheme was languishing, as were most of the railroad enterprises then, and President Brooks, failing to obtain aid from the State for his company, and seeing no immediate future for the New York and Albany Railroad that would benefit him, turned his attention to the Erie, a brief study of the scope of which project convinced him that not only its future greatness, but the salvation and enhancement of his own railroad, lay in a union of the two (as shown in the map).
  There is no record to show how his idea was received by the Erie management. Eleazar Lord, in his scathing review of the Erie, published in 1855, makes no reference to the Erie-Harlem incident. The Offer was apparently not accepted, and with that a golden opportunity was thrown Away. This might have been the fatal mistake, that made possible all of Erie's subsequent woes - But for that mistake there would be no Vanderbilt Kingdom, and the History of Wall Street and of Railroads in this Country would have been entirely different. All of the Present Great Terminal possessions of the Vanderbilt System at Forty-second Street in New York City might have been Ernie's by a Nod of the Head and the Outlay of Less than $90,000.
caption: 1840 Map of Harlem Railroad with the (failed) plan to connect the Erie Railroad. (see left-top corner)
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