"The Public Be Pleased"
William G. McAdoo and the Hudson Tubes
by Anthony Fitzherbert
Electric Railroaders Association - June 1964
 A Henry
Raudenbush photograph of a 7-car train of the old Joint Service cars,
nicknamed the "Red McAdoo's", approaching Journal Square from the
Portals in the mid-1950s. This photo is the only one used which dates
later than 1912.
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"THE TUNNEL COMPANY believes in the 'public be pleased' policy and
opposes the 'public be damned' policy. We believe that the railroad
is best which serves the people best." With this comment, summarizing
the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad's policies, company president
William Gibbs McAdoo officially opened the last of the four Hudson and
Manhattan Tunnels to passengers.
| The Uptown Tunnels
Invitation to the opening of the H&M
tubes.
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The idea of building a tunnel under the Hudson River was conceived in
the 1860s as lower Manhattan became heavily congested. The belief was
that with a tunnel under the Hudson, the railroad lines terminating on
the west shore of the river could run their trains directly into the
city, making it possible for people to live comfortably in suburban
New Jersey and commute into the City. The first person to actually
begin building the tunnel was DeWitt Haskins, who organized the Hudson
Tunnel Railroad Company. With $10,000,000 of capital stock issued, he
began to build a tunnel between 15th Street and the New Jersey shore.
However, in 1874 the Lackawanna Railroad obtained an injunction to
halt work because of the competition which the new line would give to
the railroad's ferries.
In 1879 work resumed but was soon halted again after a blowout
occurred, taking 20 lives. In 1889 work was begun again by the English
firm of S. S. Pearson and Son, but financial woes plagued the
supervising Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company, then headed by John R. Dos
Passos, and in 1892 work was suspended again.
In 1889, an ambitious young lawyer, William G. McAdoo, independently
thought of a plan to build a tunnel under the Hudson. Mr. McAdoo
thought that running electric trains in tubes under the river would be
the most feasible answer to problems faced by late 19th century
commuters plagued by slow ferries running on long headways. He had
previously had experience with railroad electrification. While
practicing law in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he became trustee of the
Knoxville Street Railroad. Because of his persuasive powers, money
was borrowed to electrify the Knoxville horsecar lines in 1890. To
personally supervise the undertaking, Mr. McAdoo commuted almost daily
between the two cities-a distance of 120 miles.
| | William Gibbs McAdoo
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Mr. McAdoo moved to New York in 1892. He became a business associate
of John Dos Passos, a leading corporation lawyer and president of the
defunct Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company. Obsessed with the tunnel
idea, McAdoo mentioned his proposal to Dos Passos, who informed him of
the abandoned half-mile segment of tube lying under the river.
Through Dos Passos McAdoo was introduced to Charles Jacobs, who was
the engineer in charge of the abandoned work. Jacobs, and his firm
partner, J. Vipond Davies, estimated that completion of the tunnel
would cost four million dollars. Upon inspection of the pumped-out
tunnel, McAdoo and the engineers found that the basic structure and
equipment were usable.
By the selling of bonds by the Hudson Companies, money was provided to
continue the construction of the tunnel. At this time, McAdoo was
president of the New York and New Jersey Railroad Company-one of
several companies interested in securing a franchise on the portion of
the proposed line to be built in Manhattan from the New York Rapid
Transit Board. Later, the company and others with the same interest
combined, forming the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company, and
Mr. McAdoo became president of what for many years was to be known as
the "H&M".
The Hudson Companies began work in 1902 under the river, with the
agreement that the firm would turn the tunnels over to Mr. McAdoo to
operate upon completion. The tunnel was built by pushing a shield
through the silt at the bottom of the river. As the mechanical shield
was pushed through the mud, every thirty inches the door was opened
and the displaced mud placed into the chamber, where it was shoveled
into small cars which hauled it to the surface. In places the silt
was baked with huge kerosene torches to harden it so it would be
removed more easily.
When the company began the second uptown tube, enormous hydraulic
jacks pushed a shield through the mud at the rate of seventy-two feet
a day. Mr. McAdoo states in his autobiography, Crowded Years, that
this was the first time in history that a tunnel was bored without
laborers having to excavate and remove the displaced earth. All of
the work was done under an air pressure of thirty-eight pounds per
square inch.
However, the tunnel engineers ran into difficulty when a reef was
encountered on the Manhattan side of the river. Chief Engineer Jacobs
devised a method of dynamiting through the reef and removing the rock
through the doors of the bulkhead. Clay was dumped onto the reef from
barges to lessen the chance of a tunnel blowout occurring. Several
blowouts did occur, nevertheless, and the worst one took one man's
life. In this accident three canvas yacht sails were fastened
together to plug the leak, However, when the interior of the bulkhead
was reopened, the sails, as well as the clay weighing them down, were
sucked into the tunnel.
Mr. McAdoo intended that the uptown line be modern and efficient in
every respect. The terminals at Hoboken and 33rd Street were built so
that passengers arriving aboard the trains would be discharged onto
one platform, and on the other side would be the loading platform.
The stations were characterized by vaulted arches, round classical
pillars, and wide passageways leading to the surface. He observed the
mistakes in the construction and operation of New York City's
Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) subway, and eliminated the
possibility of these flaws in his line. He particularly desired to
eliminate the conflict between people boarding the cars and those
leaving; hence the separate platforms. No stations were located on
curves. Each subway platform was 370 feet long, long enough to hold
an eight-car train. The river tubes were 5,650 feet long between
shafts and reached a maximum depth of 97 feet below mean sea level.
The diameter of the tubes was 15 feet, three inches and they were
thirty to eighty feet apart under the river.
| | Plaque honoring President Roosevelt's
ceremonial opening of the H&M tubes
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Mr. McAdoo also incorporated novel ideas into the design of the cars
for the Uptown Division, which were custom-manufactured by the
American Car and Foundry Company and the Pressed Steel Car
Company. Instead of holding onto straps, passengers could steady
themselves by holding onto poles running between the car floors and
ceilings. The center door of each car was opened pneumatically, and
each car had a concrete floor to prevent passengers from slipping.
Finally, each car was constructed entirely of steel, unlike those of
the gloomy city subway.
The first tube was "holed through" on March 11, 1904. Mr. McAdoo was
called urgently from his desk by Chief Engineer Jacobs when the two
shields met, and he, followed by a procession led by Jacobs, walked
from New Jersey via the tube, through the doors of the two shields, to
New York. The mate tube was holed through on September 24, 1905.
As public interest in the project continued to rise, and as work
progressed on the tubes and the cut and cover excavation along Sixth
Avenue in New York City, Mr. McAdoo was planning possible extensions
to the Tubes. One would have run from the 9th Street Station to Astor
Place, offering IRT passengers an across-the-platform transfer to the
H&M. The 6th Avenue line was to be extended to Grand Central
Station. Construction was started on the line to Astor Place, but only
about two hundred and fifty feet of the line were completed before
Mr. McAdoo decided to stop construction of this branch until the most
important extension of all was completed-a line linking the Erie
Terminal with the Pennsylvania Terminal at Exchange Place, and
Cortlandt Street in Manhattan.
| | The west end of the Summit Avenue (now
Journal Square), Jersey City station of the H&M, 1911.
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While construction continued, the Hudson Companies' Board of Directors
was being increased by some of the wealthiest men in New York.
Mr. McAdoo, whose chief role as head of the H&M was the promotion
of the tunnels, persuaded Pliny Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt,
J. P. Morgan and others to invest money in the building of the Tubes.
A total of over seventy million dollars was raised and spent on
the seventeen miles of tunnel.
The years 1906 and 1907 saw the completion of the uptown stations
between Christopher Street and 19th Street, the arrival of equipment
(delivered after testing on New York's Second Avenue Elevated Line),
and the start of construction on the downtown tunnels. Two tubes were
being tunneled between Exchange Place and the new Hudson Terminal at
Cortlandt, Church and Fulton Streets. The Hudson Terminal was to
consist of a station area topped by two 22-story buildings housing the
H&M offices and with enough spare office space to hold 10,000
other people. Mr. McAdoo predicted that these two buildings would
stimulate a great increase in traffic between New Jersey and the
downtown Manhattan area.
The Hudson Companies spent the first two months of 1908 testing the
trains on the Second Avenue Elevated, and running them through the
Tubes loaded with enough sandbags to equal the weight of a full load
of passengers. The companies also ran several inspection trips for
the press, and on the morning before the opening, a special train was
sent from Manhattan to Hoboken loaded with a special "Tunnel Edition"
published by the Jersey City Journal. The alert Mr. McAdoo had
the H&M's public relations department send press releases to large
newspapers across the country describing the now-famous Tubes. When
not involved in promotion work, Mr. McAdoo was personally supervising
the construction work under the Hudson or at the downtown terminal.
He climbed onto a steel beam which was about to be hoisted to the top
of the structure, and was lifted 275 feet into the air, while closely
surveying the structure. The workers at the top of the building were
aghast, but Mr. McAdoo just smiled and said "Good Morning,
Gentlemen."
| | Artist's rendering of the proposed
Journal Square station with yard, PRR steam tracks, and trolley
loop. It was not constructed this way.
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Mr. McAdoo insisted upon only the best treatment for the expected
thousands of people who would be riding the H&M. Just before the
gaiety of the opening day celebration exploded in Hoboken, Mr. McAdoo
gathered his employees together in one of the stations and outlined
his reactionary policy for running a transit system-a policy which,
while making him a hero in the eyes of the public and the press, was
never followed as closely by any other railroad in the United States.
He began quietly by pointing out that "the employees are the people
upon whom the success of the railroad depends. This railroad was
not," he continued, "built for the stockholders, for its officers, or
for its employees; it was built for the public. Its first
consideration must always be the safety, comfort, and convenience of
its patrons. Any railroad employee who adopts the attitude of other
railroad corporations, 'the public be damned,' will get into trouble.
Employees must always give civil answers even when the questions asked
are silly. For years the elevated lines... have been telling their
passengers 'to step lively'; any H&M man saying that or using any
similar terminology will be fired." Mr. McAdoo's policy of "the public
be pleased" was a tremendous factor in his personal success in running
the H&M, and was the primary factor in the popularity of the line.
His talk was greeted by cheers and applause, showing that the
H&M's president and his employees understood and respected each
other.
The term "the public be pleased" became the motto of the H&M. It
was the direct opposite both in statement and attitude of a comment
made by the son of William Vanderbilt, many years before, regarding
the passenger service of the New York Central Railroad.
At 3:30 on the afternoon of February 25, 1908, a long line of invited
dignitaries entered the 19th Street Station for the first official run
through the Tubes. The station and eight-car train were in darkness,
except for emergency lights operated from storage batteries in the
train. Standing by in the station was a special telegraph operator,
who signalled President Theodore Roosevelt, waiting at his desk in the
White House, to push a button turning on the power. As the President
turned on the current, the station and train were immediately flooded
with light and the chattering of the compressors mingled with the
cheers of the 400 guests.
As the train swiftly picked up speed, in Mr. McAdoo's words, "the
silk-hatted gentlemen sat in rows, leaning on their canes, and looking
a little uneasy as they glanced out of the windows and saw the curving
iron walls flash by." The boundary line between the states was marked
by a circle of red, white and blue lights in the tube, and the train
stopped here to allow New York Governor Charles Hughes and New Jersey
Governor Franklin Fort to shake hands between the two cars,
symbolizing the "formal marriage of the two states."
When the train arrived at Hoboken, almost 20,000 cheering people were
thronging in the square outside the terminal, and as the official
party came out of the kiosks, boats in the harbor and church bells
added to the din. Following speeches by Mr. McAdoo, the two
governors, and other officials, Mr. Oakman, president of the Hudson
Companies, turned the property over to Mr. McAdoo, for operation by
the H&M. Then the official party returned via the Tubes to
Manhattan for an elaborate banquet at Sherry's.
| | H&M timetable showing route map and
connecting services.
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The line opened at midnight, operating on a five-minute headway. The
sky over Hoboken was punctuated with fireworks as over 5,000 people
waited to be admitted into the station. When the first regular
passenger train left Hoboken, it was packed with cheering, singing
people, including a large group of Yale students, who were toasting
the line with drinks. The platforms of the Manhattan stations were
also mobbed despite the late hour. In the first 24 hours, over 50,000
people rode the line. The morning rush hours saw a virtual
abandonment of the Lackawanna's ferries, as the commuters availed
themselves of the H&M's three-minute headway and eight-minute running
time to 19th Street.
The opening was front page news in the New York press. The Times
cited the event as "one of the greatest engineering feats ever
accomplished, greater perhaps than the Panama Canal will be when
opened, considering the obstacles which had to be overcome."
The Sixth Avenue stores seized the opportunity to exhibit merchandise
in the display windows in the stations under Sixth Avenue. All stations
were entered through neighboring stores; no sidewalk entrances were
built. Sales boomed, as did real estate values along the Lackawanna's
line, when thousands of people moved from the City to New Jersey
suburbs.
| | The crossover west of 9th Street on the
uptown branch in a 1907 photo. It was removed in 1910.
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The line was extended to 23rd Street on June 10, 1908. Trains used
only the easterly track to reach 23rd Street, crossing over to the
westbound track on the return trip at 19th Street.
Before the opening of the downtown tubes, Mr. McAdoo went to the
office of Alexander J. Cassett, president of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, to ask him to abandon the ferry service from the PRR Exchange
Place Terminal to Manhattan, so that passengers would be channeled
into the H&M. He argued that the Tube trains would be faster and
more appealing to the passengers. Mr. Cassett was most impressed with
Mr. McAdoo's manner. The ferries were not taken off, but they were
renovated to handle vehicular traffic more easily. In addition, PRR
tickets were to be accepted on the H&M for passengers who wished
to continue to Manhattan via the Tubes.
| | The Downtown Tunnels
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The downtown river tunnels, on the other hand, came no closer than 90
feet and at the state line are 240 feet apart. They were built
through mud and rock at a depth of 60 to 90 feet below mean low water
level, and were 15 feet, 3 inches in diameter, lying 15 to 40 feet
below the bottom of the river. Part way under the river sections of
tube were placed under the westbound tunnel to permit the proposed
third and fourth "Erie" tracks to diverge from the route to Exchange
Place; the headings for these additional tunnels may still be seen
between the existing tunnels just outside Hudson Terminal.
At 10:17 on the morning of July 19, 1909, Miss Harriet Floyd McAdoo,
daughter of the H&M president, mounted a platform in the mezzanine
of Hudson Terminal before 2,000 invited guests, and upon receiving a
signal from Chief Engineer Jacobs, pressed a button turning off every
light in the station. A moment later, she touched another button,
sending power into the third rails of the new line, relighting every
light, and causing the crowd to break into cheers, which were
instantly echoed outside by church bells and boat whistles.
Fifty feet below the street, four special trains were waiting, and
when these had filled, Mr. McAdoo gave the turn of the controller
which sent the first train rolling under the Hudson to Jersey City,
and ceremonies at Jersey City's City Hall, which were highlighted by
the reading of a telegram of congratulations to Mr. McAdoo from
President William Howard Taft.
| | The Park Place station in Newark was new
in 1912. It was closed when the H&M was rerouted into the PRR's
new Newark station in 1937.
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The line initially ran on a three-minute headway as a shuttle to the
Exchange Place Station, where passengers were whisked by elevator to
the PRR Station and the street a hundred feet above the H&M
platform level. Trains were reversed beyond the island platform
station on a stub-end track known as the "Penn Pocket." The line
instantly became popular because the running time was "Three minutes
to New York," and was acclaimed by the press as saving over three
million minutes a day for passengers, as the ride was 29 minutes
shorter than the average ferry crossing.
The tunnels between Hoboken, Erie Station, and Exchange Place were
opened on August 2, 1909, and the tube junction allowing service
between the Sixth Avenue Tunnel and the downtown tubes opened on
September 20 of that year.
The five-track Hudson Terminal was not only an engineering wonder; it
was the most elaborate subway station in New York. It had a separate
platform for baggage and for the removal of ashes from the boiler room
beneath the station. The baggage service was introduced in 1910, but
was a failure. Two baggage cars were built by J. G. Brill in the
style of passenger equipment but with open sides. Baggage carts were
rolled onto the cars with their cargo intact, transported to Hudson
Terminal, and raised to the mezzanine via special elevators.
For the passenger, the terminal had numerous concessions ranging
from a meat market to a movie theatre. Mr. McAdoo initiated a system
in which a wife could leave packages purchased in the city at the
H&M baggage office for her husband to pick up later in the
day. The H&M installed a large powder room in the terminal, and
supplied the ladies with free powder and hairpins. For five cents any
rest room patron was supplied with a towel and a bar of soap.
| | The entrance to the 19th Street station
on the uptown branch in 1908. It was closed in 1954.
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Illuminated train destination indicators were installed in the
terminal. But Mr. McAdoo's chief pride was his ticket booths on
wheels which could be pushed by a porter to any point in the terminal
where they might be needed. Known as the "flying squadrons," each of
the dozen movable booths was occupied by a pretty girl.
When the terminal opened, the eager crowd at the Cortlandt Street
entrance crushed against one of the "flying squadrons," sending it
rolling across the terminal before police could rescue its
panic-stricken inhabitant.
Mr. McAdoo hired only women to sell tickets when he found that they
were friendlier than men, and more efficient in handling change.
However, whenever a gay blade tried to become better acquainted, a
male "ticket chopper" would diplomatically urge him to move on.
Although women at the time were fighting for their suffrage,
Mr. McAdoo's outlook was such that he insisted upon paying them the
same wages as men were paid.
A New York women's organization suggested the idea of a special subway
car for women riding H&M and IRT trains. Only Mr. McAdoo was
willing to try it. A car equipped with a specially dressed guard was
run on the tube trains for the ladies, but most woman wanted to ride
with the men, so the "old maid's retreat", as the newspapers dubbed
the idea, was dropped after a few months.
The pleasant atmosphere of Hudson Terminal was increased by the lack
of dispatcher's gangs. When a train's departure time arrived, the
guards closed the doors and a bell rang in the motorman's cab,
indicating that the train was ready to roll.
The Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, Susquehanna, Lackawanna and Erie
Railroads all rented space in the terminal for ticket
offices. Railroad timetables listed the connecting departures from the
Tube stations.
Mr. McAdoo had ramps built in the Erie Station and Hudson Terminal in
lieu of stairs, and in certain other stations elevators were installed
to minimize the effort of reaching the platforms. In 1910 he
experimented with automatic station indicators aboard three Tube cars,
which would announce the next stop by illuminated signs. The
experiment failed, so the signs were removed from the cars.
| | A H&M Manhattan class "B" car built
by Pressed Steel. These cars were placed into Jersey City-Hoboken-New
York service in 1909. These and similar cars built until 1928 still
provide all service on these lines but will be replaced soon. They
seat 48 people and weigh 69,620 lbs.
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Above the terminal were built the Hudson Terminal Buildings, at the
time the largest office complex in the world. Served by 39 elevators,
the 275-foot, 22-story structures contained 24 thousand tons of steel,
and had room for over 10,000 people in 4,000 offices on 27 acres of
floor space. An exclusive restaurant club, founded by Mr. McAdoo, had
its headquarters on the top floor of one of the buildings.
Two additional tubes were started at Hudson Terminal to provide
express service direct to the Erie Station. However, because of a
lack of funds they were never completed. In another proposal, the
Erie Railroad wanted a spur built from the existing tunnel near the
H&M Station under Pavonia Avenue to a new station directly under
the Erie Terminal. This plan was dropped and a long passageway was
built to a large concourse under the Erie train platforms, with an
entrance to every platform. Eighty cars were ordered by the H&M
from the Pressed Steel Car Company to serve the Erie Station, but
delivery was delayed because of a company strike. Because of the lack
of rolling stock the Erie Station was not served by the H&M during
the rush hours.
Erie Station was the scene of another McAdoo experiment. In the
concourse, a system of different combination of lights to distinguish
the various Erie routes was tried.
On August 2, 1909, the day of the initiation of Erie service, the
first breakdown occurred on the H&M. A train stalled for a half
hour under the river with both its air brake and power systems having
been rendered inoperative because of a broken coupling. Mr. McAdoo,
on this and later occasions, took newsmen to the scene of the trouble
and offered them a full explanation of the delay-setting forth
another policy which most other railroads never followed.
| | Stairway from the Hudson Terminal
Concourse to the platforms. PRR connections at Manhattan Transfer were
posted.
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Mr. McAdoo, as a person, was very modest. He regarded himself as a
"cog in the machinery." As a hero in the public eye, he was likened
to Abraham Lincoln, because of his tall, gaunt build. He loved speed,
commuting daily in a high-powered auto from his home in Yonkers, New
York to his office. He became very prominent socially because of his
easy-going, witty manner, and his ability to get along with people.
Due to his constant thought to the comfort of his passengers,
Mr. McAdoo won nationwide fame. The Greenfield, Massachusetts
Courier compared the noisy, rough ride of the IRT to Borough
Hall with the quiet, smooth H&M ride, and saluted Mr. McAdoo for
his method of "pleasant" underground transportation.
The H&M became known as the "McAdoo Tunnels," a term which finally
became taboo in newspapers because of Mr. McAdoo's energetic protests.
Mr. McAdoo wrote in his autobiography, "the millions that I was
supposed to have made out of the Hudson Terminal enterprise are
mythical millions. During the eleven years that I was president of
the tunnels, I received... what amounted to an average of fifty
thousand dollars a year."
Complaints were virtually unheard of on the H&M. Mr. McAdoo noted
in his autobiography that, although the line carried over 49 million
passengers a year, less than 50 complaints were received. Those that
were received Mr. McAdoo investigated himself. The H&M invited
complaints and suggestions on how to improve service, and to insure
the carrying out of the company's policy, "the public be pleased,"
Mr. McAdoo spent much of his time touring the system, going from train
to train, keeping watch on the employees, talking with them, telling
them that the passengers were the primary concern of the railroad. He
said in a 1910 lecture at Harvard that "the condition of the railroad
equipment and manners of the employees give a good picture of the
management." In accord with his policy, cars and stations were cleaned
daily.
| | A H&M class "D" car built
by Pressed Steel. These cars were placed into the Joint Service with
the PRR between Hudson Terminal and Newark in 1911. They seated 52
passengers and weighed 73,000 lbs. They were replaced in 1958 by fifty
"K"-class cars.
|

The merits of the H&M service were advertised daily in the New
York papers, as well as in German and Jewish-language
newspapers. Timetables for the system were published, as well as
brochures which listed all subway and steam railroad connections. Car
advertisements were also displayed in the Interborough subway. In the
effort to publicize the H&M, schedules printed in English and
German were distributed on inboard ocean liners two days before their
arrival in New York.
A 1909 proposal to extend Tube service to Staten Island via the
Central Railroad of New Jersey tracks was greeted with enthusiasm by
the citizens of Bayonne and Staten Island. Tubes were to run from the
Grove-Henderson Station to a station under the CNJ tracks at
Communipaw where the CNJ would terminate its runs, eliminating the
Jersey City Terminal and the CNJ ferry service. The tunnels would
continue to a portal near the CNJ Van Nostrand Place Station, where
H&M trains would run along the CNJ line, with stations at
Greenville Avenue, 45th Street, 33rd Street, 22nd Street, and West 8th
Street. South of West 8th Street, the trains would enter twin tubes
under the Kill van Kull and run to points on Staten Island. This line
was to be built after the Sixth Avenue-Grand Central Station extension,
allowing uninterrupted travel from 42nd Street to Staten Island.
| | PRR-H&M joint Manhattan Transfer
station in 1912. Here Pennsy steam engines were replaced by electric
DD-1's for Penn Station and passengers changed to H&M for
downtown.
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On March 10, 1910 the Uptown Tunnel was extended to 33rd Street, with
an intermediate station at 28th Street. The Uptown Terminal, built
under the site of the Gimbels store, had baggage and ticket offices,
and several railroads also opened ticket offices here. However,
because of the proximity of Pennsylvania Station (only one block
west), the H&M never carried baggage on the Uptown line. On
September 6, 1910, the tube between Exchange Place and Grove-Henderson
Streets was opened to traffic, and on November 10, the Henderson
Street Yard was opened. At this time 130,000 people were using the
Tubes daily.
In September, 1910, the Public Service Commission advertised for bids
for the proposed Triborough line-a subway to be independent of the IRT
and the H&M. Not a bid was received to build the line with
private capital, but Mr. McAdoo, who was in the hospital with
appendicitis, offered to spend fifty million dollars of H&M funds
for rolling stock and take a lease on the line for 25 years, if the
City would build the line with its own money. He offered to put up a
bond for one million dollars to insure his faith in the contract. The
initial line, which was to run from Broadway to Union Square, to
University Place, to Wooster Street, under Church Street to connect
with Hudson Terminal, would more than pay for itself according to
Mr. McAdoo.
| | Map showing proposed extensions to the
H&M system, 1909.
|
The IRT management, which had allowed its cars and stations to decay,
now realized that it could lose its monopoly on New York subway
travel, offered to spend seventy-five million dollars to build
additional subways, only to get Mr. McAdoo-a true competitor who was
genuinely interested in providing good service-out of the way. In
effect, Mr. McAdoo made the IRT improve its service by making his
offer to operate the Triborough subway.
The final chapter of the McAdoo-Hudson Tubes story began on April 16,
1906, when the H&M signed an agreement with the PRR to operate a
joint service between Newark and Hudson Terminal. The earnings from
this operation were to be split between the two companies, and the
trains were to be operated by H&M crews who were required to pass
a PRR rules test. The Hudson Tubes were extended for a half-mile
beyond the Grove-Henderson Station, where they merged with the PRR
right-of-way to Manhattan Transfer, a station in the Jersey Meadows
which allowed passenger interchange with all PRR trains (and where PRR
trains operating from Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan changed from
DD-l type electric engines to steam locomotives or vice versa).
Service began on October 1, 1911. The fare to Manhattan Transfer,
which could be reached only by train, was 17 cents one-way, 30 cents
round trip. Trains ran on a six-minute headway during the rush hours,
and every 20 minutes during the base period. Service was provided
every 30 minutes during the owl hours. On November 26, 1911 this
service was extended via an elevated structure to a three-track
stub-end Tube Terminal at Park Place in Newark, with an intermediate
station in Harrison.
| | The switch tower at Hudson Terminal in
1909. This tower has been modernized twice since and now has a
color-coded US&S train describer.
|

The 96 cars for this line were purchased jointly by the H&M and
Pennsy from the Pressed Steel Car Company, and were similar in some
respects to the H&M's other cars. The run between the two cities
took less than 18 minutes at speeds which reached over 65 miles per
hour at some points. The final station on the H&M system was
opened at Summit Avenue (now Journal Square) in Jersey City on April
12, 1912 to allow a transfer between the Tubes and trolley lines of
the Public Service Railway of New Jersey.
| | The interior of an H&M car showing
experimental station announcer in 1910. It was unsuccessful and removed
shortly thereafter.
|
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In 1913 Mr. McAdoo left his post as president of the Hudson and
Manhattan Railroad to become a member of President Woodrow Wilson's
cabinet, where he served as Secretary of the Treasury. He had left a
legacy which today is still saving thousands of commuters many minutes
daily, but which more importantly is a monument to a man who possessed
great determination and who strove, in spite of almost insurmountable
problems, to mold his dream into reality. An editorial in the New
York Globe truthfully summarized, "William G. McAdoo has taught
the young men of today... that it is the mental and moral qualities of
the man that are the most important forces after all, If there were
more men like William G. McAdoo in the world, the rate of human
progress would be considerably accelerated."
The author is deeply grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Francis H. McAdoo, Jr.,
and to William Gibbs McAdoo, II, for supplying much of the information
making this article possible. Many of the photographs used to
illustrate this booklet were graciously provided by The Port of New
York Authority, which now operates the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad
as the Port Authority Trans-Hudson System (PATH). The Editor wishes
to thank Leon Katz of the Public Relations Department of the Port
Authority and Daniel Carey of its Rail Transportation Department for
their kind assistance and interest in this historical work. A
HEADLIGHTS SUPPLEMENT. Copyright 1964 by the Electric Railroaders'
Assn., Inc., Jack May, Editor.
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 The H&M entrance at Herald
Square (33rd Street) New York. Note the trolleys on Broadway and the
6th Avenue Elevated in this 1910 photo.
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