Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels (Hardcover)

by Jill Jonnes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Modern Manhattan is a miracle in many ways, but all of its imports, commuters included, must traverse at least one river to get there. In 1900, the New York Central, owned by the Vanderbilts, already gave Manhattan a northern connection over the narrow Harlem River. A southern connection over the mile-wide Hudson would be a whole different story. Alexander Cassatt, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was the visionary on the project. But how to do it? A bridge plan fell through due to expense; a tunnel would lack the oxygen needed for steam engines. The breakthrough lay in the cutting-edge electrified locomotives developed in Paris. Historian Jonnes (Empires of Light), demonstrating impressive immersion in the Gilded Age, ably spins the tale, which bears some similarities to The Devil in the White City. This is a vivid story of hardball Tammany Hall maneuvering and mind-boggling engineering. Once construction began, the two-track narrative settles on the daunting construction of the tunnels and Charles McKim's much-admired design of the terminus at Pennsylvania Station, prized by New Yorkers only after its ill-considered demise in 1963. Jonnes can claim an important addition to the popular literature of how New York became the archetype of a great American metropolis. (Apr. 23)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Commemorated in many a rueful history book after "barbarians" demolished it in the 1960s, New York City's Pennsylvania Station was the visible manifestation of a titanic subterranean project. Its sweeping story, involving engineering challenges, an inflexibly honest corporation leader, flexibly corrupt politicians, and street-level sociology, comes together marvelously in Jonnes' admiring history of the undertaking. It arose from the Pennsylvania Railroad's determination to run its trains directly into Manhattan; in the 1890s, Penn passengers had to alight in New Jersey and board ferries, a scene Jonnes evokes with an excerpt of Penn president Alexander Cassatt's experience of the inconvenience. The main impetus to the enterprise, Cassatt, operating in an era of lightly regulated capitalism, wielded substantial power, and his decisions structure Jonnes' narrative. Cassatt's siting of the station in the city's notorious den of iniquity, the Tenderloin, introduces the outstretched palms of Tammany Hall, while his taste for the classical aesthetic introduces Charles McKim's design of the station. Equally interesting on the technical hazards of the tunnel work, Jonnes has produced an exemplary construction epic. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (April 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670031585
• ISBN-13: 978-0670031580
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #320,825 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful evocation of a a new century when men believed they could achieve anything, May 15, 2007

By	Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This is a book that can be appreciated on many levels. First and foremost, it is the story of how the once mighty Pennsylvania Railroad brought East-West trains into Manhattan. Though it had become the greatest sea port in the nation, the country's financial and manufacturing hub, Manhattan had no terminal for East-West trains. The New York Central had its trains coming in from the north, but if you wanted to ride the train to Philadelphia and points west and south, you first had to take a boat across the Hudson River to New Jersey.

For decades, the leaders of the Pennyslvania Railroad had tried to come up with a way to bring their trains into Manhattan. A bridge over the Hudson was designed and then abandoned for lack of financial support from other railroads. A brilliant visionary, Alexander Cassatt, as President of the Pennsylvania convinced the board of directors on a great gamble: to invest millions in the building of tunnels under the Hudson, erection of a great station in Manhattan and extending the tunnels across the Manhattan and the East River to Long Island.

The stories are of the herculean engineering effort involved in designing and constructing the tunnels, since none that long had ever been attempted; the problems of dealing with the Democrat Party's corrupt Tammany political machine; the design and construction of the iconic Penn Station; Teddy Roosevelt's campaign against trusts and big business and more.

In short, Jonnes's history is epic because her subjects are epic.

Jonnes has a good writing style; she is able to breathe life into some relatively obscure subjects and does well at attempting to convey the nature of life in the early 20th Century.

None of us will ever be able to visit Penn Station and appreciate that it was designed to be a monument, not a structure that was destroyed a mere half-century after it was built. Few of us will ever be able to appreciate just how important passenger railroads were at one time and fewer still will ever experience the thrill of cross-country travel on a first-class train. Probably none of us or very few will ever experience performing manual labor a hundred feet beneath the surface of a roiling river when labor relations were considered a matter strictly between the laborer and his employer.

Jonnes does a marvelous job of bringing all this to a reasonable semblance of life. It is a wonderful history from a time when technologies we take for granted now were still new and men thought they could acheive anything and believed that the future would be a better place.

Jerry

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ENGINEERING MASTERPIECE, May 5, 2007

By	Charlotte Harley "Charli" (Delray Beach, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is very good. Highly informative about an enterprise I knew nothing about. A personal look at the people responsible for this feat, as well as politically and socially educational. I had a bit of an issue with some hopping around on the dates; and also toward the end of the book the author stated that the General Waiting Room in the gorgeous Pennsylvania Station was, at the time of its completion, the largest room in the world. She also stated that, at the time, it was the world's largest building. Versailles, Blenheim and the Biltmore come immediately to mind and any number of others that would have been in existence then. I would have liked some facts to back these statements. I would also have liked to know where all of the lovely granite went to. Surely it was not ALL deposited in fields? But then, again, perhaps. After all, some group of idiots managed to decide to tear it down in 1963. Lovely book, well worth the read.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Read, May 11, 2007

By	Brett M. Reigh (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jill Jonnes does a wonderful job of describing the long and difficult saga concerning the digging of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers, as well as the construction of old Pennsylvania Station in the middle of turn-of-the-century New York's infamous "Tenderloin" district. Very well-written and easy to read, she discusses the travails Alexander Cassatt and subsequent PRR presidents had in dealing with New York's Tammany Hall, the shifting muck and silt under the Hudson River, which at times threatened to doom the project, and a number of other issues related to an undertaking that was described as one of the world's greatest engineering feats. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in railroading, New York City, or the Pennsylvania Railroad in particular.