Customer Reviews

American Experience: New York Underground

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't know what these other two reviewers were expecting but this is exactly what it says it is, the story of the building of the New York Subway. No it's not Ric Burns New York Documentary...why you thought it was is beyond me...this is an excellent documentary of the early years of the Subway system.

I saw this on PBS several years ago. It is the incredible story of how the subway system was built in just a few years. It shows how our society has drifted backwards from the "can do" attitude of the early part of this century.
Today this would take 20 years of BS, followed by 20 years of building. FIVE STARS

This hour-long episode of "American Experience" documents the planning and building of New York City's first subway route. With wonderful film clips, photographs, and illustrations from the era, along with commentary from authors and historians, it tells the story, first, of the original two-block-long experimental pneumatic tube railway, and then of the massive, four-year construction project that became the IRT, one of the world's earliest--and certainly the longest--electric subways. Including profiles of the men who made it happen and providing wonderful period details, this documentary offers a glimpse into a different time at a pleasant, bite-sized length for armchair historians. Recommended.

I have ridden many miles on the BMT, IRT and the IND and wondered idly how these underground networks had come to be. The system is now over a century old, a bit gritty and shopworn, but still carrying passengers in relative safety. It was a seemingly impossible job to dig all those tunnels, to disrupt ground transportation for years, but it had to be done if New York City were to function and grow. The city after the Civil War was confined on the southern third of Manhattan Island. It was crowded with traffic to the point of strangulation. Expansion was impossible. It was absolutely necessary that travel go underground where it would be unaffected by automobiles and weather. The blizzard of 1888 made that obvious, if the summer glut was not enough.

Building the subway was as big a project as the Great Wall of China or the Pyramid of Cheops. This, then, is the story of the visionaries who took on the project and of the men who perished to make it happen.

This is not a 14 hour documentary about New York City, instead it is a 56 minute long documentary about how the old Electric Subway in NYC was built in 1900, as seen on public television and "American Experience".