This is a little under one hour. Thanks everyone for coming out on this slushy, lovely night. I have done one event so far on this and it was also a sluggishly, lovely night so maybe its what i should expect Going Forward for things. Its appropriate, talking to people about this today as i was thinking about the snow come its appropriate theres snow on the ground because snow as it turned out was a critical factor in the building of subways in this country. Ill talk about that, but subways became to be in large part because of a storm much bigger than the one we are experiencing today and a much deadlier one. I thought what i would do tonight, a couple things. I thought i would talk briefly about the question asked when hit by the book is how did you come up with the idea for the book, a natural question you often hear. And ill talk about that and then im going to read a few passages. One thing about the book is its sort of toggle back and forth between two great cities, boston and new york. Thats interesting to talk about because the cities have a bit of history together. A certain gentleman named babe ruth, people to think what started that rivalry but, in fact, it goes back much further than that. And so ill talk a little bit about that as well. So those to city sort of have a lot in common and a lot of differences. Ill do some readings from a few passages from the book, to give you a flavor of how the book covers boston and new york because they were very different projects when boston opened at subway, it was essentially about a mile of track, a tiny little section of track. When new york opened its sub is essentially 20 miles of track. It was a much, much bigger project with the open, and, of course, some people like to joke the boston stop the building after they open the one mile and never improved upon the train. Still riding on what they wrote on back then. Whereas new york certainly did expand and grow and explode its subway system. So briefly, just how the book came to be. When i first started, i used to be a transportation reporter in new jersey. One of the beats i covered, the bergen record, and when i covered transit assassinated by trains and transportation issues and when he moved to boston it was a fun experience. Start looking for a book idea mr. Looking at the idea of the boston subway not knowing it was one of the things that was interesting is as a look into the history of it and i discovered nobody had written sort of the true story behind how the subway came to be. But then i was interested when it discovered the same time boston was debating and building and taking the subway, new york was doing the exact same thing. At the same time in the late 1800s both cities were completely overrun by immigrants who are flooded into the city in the second half of the 19th century and that overrun the cities. The cities were at the time sort of just fingernails of what they are today. Everybody was crammed into just a tiny portion of the city because that was as far out as you could go. If you want to go, take brookline for example, Downtown Boston to brookline would take you two hours by horse and carriage. People out here, very few people lived out here except for the extremely wealthy and their private carriages and sort of that was the way life was back then. If he did not have a private carriage and you lived downtown on one of those sort of streets that was developed very early, that was it. The same thing was true for new york. In new york city everybody lived in the fourth as part of downtown new york city. Crammed into the finnell of the island of manhattan, and was only when college began to speed up an electric talley came along and other means of moving people around started to come along that in paper able to move out and without of the city. At first it was a mile, two miles, then for miles and eventually six miles. The city began to expand and grow and that was critical to get people further out from the downtown area where they were living. That was a big moment in the second half of the 19th century that happen with expansion of cities. The book sort of developed from the Pivotal Moment when city started to expand. What happened was a couple Pivotal Moments happened. The blizzard of 1880. In 1888 a storm unlike nothing we have ever seen since then crippled the entire northeast. At least 400 people but some people estimate 11,000 people were killed in this blizzard. It just devastated the entire northeast. New york, boston and everything in between ground to a standstill. When that happened new york especially sort of took look at the way they were moving the people in the city, the time was an elevated trains and carriages on the streets and said, this has to change. We cant be at the mercy of the skies any longer. We have to change this. Boston at the time had already started to look at ways to move people underground. This is where the story became very interesting. Theres a gentleman in the boston by the name of Henry Whitney. If you think of the name whitney in american culture, for me anyway two things come to mind. One of them is the Whitney Museum in new york city which is a famous great miss him, founded by ancestors of the Whitney Family. Another one was eli whitney, back in the fifth grade when i the guy who invented the cotton gin but eli whitney was a cousin of the Whitney Family. So this family is just one of the most important cultural and families that made such an impact on American Life today. These two brothers from the Whitney Family who grew up in conway massachusetts out by springfield, they both play pivotal roles in the two subways, one in boston from one india. Henry whitney live right here in brookline and he is essentially singlehandedly responsible for what you see now on beacon street. He is the many sort of saw the vision of beacon street becoming what it is today with tracks down the middle, trees lining those tracks, boulevard in both sides of the street, of the tracks, and he sort of saw that in developed that and made a fortune off of it. Is also the vendor first proposed the idea of building a subway, a tunnel underneath boston common. It had never been done before. In 1887 he waited for the state legislature and proposed for what the time was a radical idea, a tunnel under boston. The idea was met with jeers. A lot of people said the common is sacred ground. Dont touch that. Can go anywhere near that. He sort of pushed it and he became a critical figure in the subway came to be today. The same time he was doing that, his brother William Whitney was getting involved in the street Transit System in the city. The interesting thing about these two brothers is that they were polar opposites. Henry whitney was a slacker, dropped out of school, bounced around the country trying to find a direction, job. Didnt marry until he was in his 40s. When he married a married woman 20 years younger than him and sort of just was directional us for a long time until he got involved in transit and real estate. That give them a purpose and a direction and it focused them. His brother was the exact opposite. His brother married, first went to harvard and ntl mac. Married into one of the richest families in the country, the pain familpain family of which a fortune in oil. Eventually William Whitney became an important were in the city who helped bring down boss tweed and eventually with her to run for president and had William Whitney want to become president of the united states, he could have. In 1886 the Chicago Convention there were buttons saint William Whitney for president. He didnt want to be president. He came back on given interview to the globe at the time where he said im not running for president. Very emphatic about buddy up get Grover Cleveland elected in the 1880s. He became a huge article figure in washington. He got involved in transit in new york. The two brothers became these critical figures in these projects. As i discover that and i dove into the life of the Whitney Family and the subway, i became fascinated with it. Two cities, two brothers, and this amazing project. The last reason i wrote this book, maybe some was the first reason, is i think all of us tend to take these things for granted. We ride the subway. We ride these massive things. Other projects over the centuries that have been built. When we ride the subway today, whether its in boston, new york, london, paris, where ever you are, i think we did do not think about how the tunnel came to be. In boston and in europe that tunnel came to be because of immigrants, workers, italians, irish workers came to this country with the sole purpose of digging a tunnel with picks and shovels and axes, their bare hands, horses pulling out cartloads of dirt. There were no giant machines that we see today will want by a construction site. There were just men and their tools. That was fascinating to as i look at the tunnel today, i find myself having and appreciation for because i think its a remarkable feat what these tunnels are today and if you think about they dont leak. We dont see water getting into them. That was done 100 years ago because at the time they need is going to be a critical thing, people need to feel safe, secure, that the air was clean. That was a huge obstacle for them to overcome the centuries ago, man did not want to go down. That was terrifying to mankind, the idea going underground was terrifying. They had to overcome that and convince people that going down there was going to be safe. So that was one of the big achievements of these tunnels was convincing mankind that going underground was safe, secure, not going to flood. Your tunnel will be light and airy and all of those things. Although we sometimes joke debate about light and airy maybe the tunnels are in boston, they really are. They are dry, right . Its pretty amazing. When i ride through the tunnels today i have a special appreciation for how those tunnels came to be. The book tells the story of not just Henry Whitney and William Whitney and some of the big players who were behind this, my gut tells the story of these immigrants. A gentleman named Patrick Mclaughlin is working on the job one day and a hammer came down and hit him on the head and almost killed him. Projects back in, they were sort of knew what theyre doing. They were learning as they went. Dynamite, a think about it, was something that was brandnew in the late 1800s. Dynamite was something they never worked before in boston or new york and you they were blowing up things in your city under the city streets. It was crazy. They didnt quite know how to harness the power of dynamite and yet they were doing it. So the book tells the story of the big people and the little people. I wanted to sort of reflect both of those things. I hope when you read the book, what you take away from it, is a special appreciation for how to get around the city, the city of boston, new york, how those tunnels came to be. Its a remarkable feat. There are still some was being built today, including in new york, theyre building the Second Avenue subway in the same company not only built the original new york subway but built bostons big dig. Theres a lot of connections between boston and new york from this project that still exists to this day. So the bookstore tells a lot of those connections. Im going to sue everybody in this room has perhaps written on the nuke sub with some points am not going to ignore new york. I will give you a flavor of what happened in the two cities. The first piece i want to read to you is from the first chapter of the book and is probably my favorite chapter to research and write. Before the nuke subway opened and the nuke subway opened in 1904, before the subway opened, 50 years earlier, there was a gentleman named alfred beach, an inventor who invented things like a typewriter for the blind. And lots of other sort of quirky inventions. Amazing man. He had a dream in the late 1840s, early 1850s, that new york needed a subway. This was 50 years before new york would get his subway. He had the stream to give new york a subway, but there was an obstacle in his way. I will read a short portion from this chapter. Devlins Clothing Store was a five story thriving commercial success. Brothers daniel and jeremiah opened their business in 1843, a few blocks away from city hall. But when business took off and he did more space for their endless racks of readymade frocks, suits come on bros, ties and trashes but one of the reasons the new space new the corner worked so well was the gigantic basement which went to levels deep underground. Alfred beach needed such a space for his new business. The beach pneumatic transit company. After scouting for real estate all on broadway, when he saw the basement of devlins yo you note it could be accessed from the sidewalk and he negotiated deal with her brothers. For 4000 a year released their entire basement for period of five years starting in 868. He spent the measure focused on a single piece of machinery he would need to be kissed him. The device he came up with ingenious and resembled a hollowed out better and used a water pump. He also designed a hood over the edge of the shield to protect its workers from falling debris, or in a catastrophic event of a collapse. Before he could start digging out a different kind of catastrophe nearly derailed his project. A pair of cronies in boston we scheme to drive up the price of gold by buying in bulk. By midseptember the price had risen to astronomical 137 per ounce and by the morning of friday september 24, 250. Frenzy in the wall street and riots nearly broke up in the National Guard was put on notice. Ted gold kept rising. Brokers lives were destroyed. One even shot himself at home before the day was a. By the time the government intervened and sold 4 million in gold, it was too late. Wall streets first black friday expose how two men acting alone could bring the country to the brink of financial ruin. Black friday toshiba including beach lost a fortune that he was two for invested in his subway to stop. Three months after black friday he was ready to start telling. In late december 1869, beach, his son frederick, in a small group of men arrived at devlins after the store closed for the night. They brought picks and shovels, covered wagons, and other tools. Following instructions to down south under broadly, curve slightly to build a murray street, the laborers worked quietly to avoid arousing suspicion on the streets but. Night after night six men would stay inside six men would stay inside this you want another half dozen perform the task to polish the total. Cemetery of the dirt and covered wagons but others laid the bricks to london to. Others laid the track to carry a single core. The walls were painted white, iron rods were installed throughout the tunnels roof up to the tape and and gas lines and oxygen masks were on the it was inefficient operation bite back scare. Claustrophobic for some who walked off the job. The rumbling from the street railways overhead created a terrifying roar that made the latenight work nervewracking. Stilstill thanks to surprise sut so inefficient a windshield, the digging went quickly and on the good that one group would dig forward eight seat. Beach was relieved at how smoothly it progress and a woman of the shield buckled and the ground should. Assaulted ground should. The soft dirt into an in and workers stared at a stone wall in front of them. It was an old dutch fort from before the revolutionary war. Each faced a dilemma. Eyes of the wall had to come down for the project was over. Nobody knew it is moving the wall would cause broadway debacle or collapse from about. It took several nights in beach stood by as every stone was removed and pass worker to worker and card at the night. The ceiling held, the wall came down and the digging resumed. As hard as he tried to keep his work is secret from the world above, it was impossible. The operation required wooden scaffolding and argued and occasional pieces of enormous be she noted that would arrive at the corner where it would sit for hours our days before \mr. {|}\mister is a disappearing down the steps never to be seen again. New yorks mayor, one of boston with oils, grew suspicious of what the beach pneumatic Transition Company was a giveaway section of broadway near warren songs ever so slightly, the mayor acted. On january 3, 1870 he said an aide with a written order demand to be let in so you could inspect the work. He got nowhere. The men had strict orders to let nobody can enter but anyone who tried that they were granted a charter by the state to complete their tongue. For whether his work was responsible for the mycenae abroad for, the response was simple. Nonsense. The New York Times reported the flat the next day and suggested the mayor was not going to back away. As the street t which the county commenced operation partially blocked up, the paper will come it is likely the mayor would counsel them to remove these. But the beach was equally stubborn. On january 8 he released a statement in reference to the ridiculous stories, the doors being closed to all persons, there is no truth to them. The company promised to make any repairs to the surface and begged for four more weeks of patients. The mayor backed off and beach bought himself time. One month later, 50 days after the digging began, the tunnel was finished but it was a perfect cylinder of 312 feet. All that was needed now with the two most important pieces, the subway car and the fan to blow the car down the tracks. Thats a little piece of history were alfred beach built essentially a secret subway tunnel. Is just a great story where he was determined to not let asked we get in his way. When predefined that what hes doing needless to say he was not happy because tweeted had a stake in this Transit System, taking a nickel out of every fair the idea of a subway in the city really angered and. So its a great story of this little guy taking on the big guy. If you want to call a david and goliath, thats a fun way to look at it but the story of alfred beach was remarkable. Thats a piece for the new york and. Let me skip ahead to boston. So boston story has a lot of interesting ang