Manhattan: Grand Central to Broadway Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic, to ride the railroads of America...

..with a new travelling companion.

Published in 1879, my Appleton's General Guide will steer me

to everything that's novel...

beautiful...memorable

or curious in the United States.

-ALL:

-Amen.

As I cross the continent, I'll discover America's Gilded Age,

when powerful tycoons launched a railway boom

that tied the nation together

and carved out its future as a superpower.

I'm beginning my American adventure in New York, the Empire State.

Starting in New York City, I'll continue up the Hudson

to Poughkeepsie and the New York State capital of Albany.

From here, I'll turn west to the Great Lakes,

taking in Rochester and Buffalo.

I'll finish my journey on the Canadian border at Niagara Falls.

Today, I'll explore New York's Manhattan Island

using the subway, the busiest rail transit system in the United States.

I'll start at the magnificent Grand Central Terminal.

In the financial district,

I'll hear about the so-called robber barons of America's Gilded Age

before tracing their activities to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I finish in Midtown, on that most theatrical of streets, Broadway.

Along the way,

I visit the gateway to the nation for millions of immigrants...

People would be sitting on the benches,

anxiously shuffling their feet, awaiting their trains

that would take them to new lives,

to a new adventure.

..uncover shady deals and crooked politicians...

Railroads could not have been built without federal support

and they relied very, very heavily

on sort of corrupt political connections.

# Pardon me, boy Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo? #

..and I'm thoroughly choo-chooed on Broadway.

# Chattanooga Choo Choo Won't you choo-choo me home? #

APPLAUSE

Like the 19th century tourist following my guide book,

I'm starting in New York City.

"Grand Central Depot, the largest and finest in the country,

"built of brick, stone and iron, 692 feet long and 240 foot wide."

That was written in 1879

and now it's been replaced by a lofty temple,

a building of such elegance, sophistication

and grandeur that the Big Apple says,

"I don't care where you've been before,

"this city admits no near equal".

In the foyer of this awe-inspiring building,

I'm meeting Dan Brucker, who's been guiding tourists

around Grand Central Terminal for over 25 years.

-Hi, I'm Dan Brucker.

-Hello, Dan, I'm Michael.

-Hi.

I was just obviously admiring Grand Central Station,

and this is an amazing bit of architecture.

So when was this finally opened to the public?

Right, this opened up in February of 1913.

It was then and remains to this day the world's largest train terminal.

Also, ever single day, coming through Grand Central Terminal,

pass more than 750,000 people.

I can believe it.

The mastermind behind this railroad cathedral was the industrial

magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.

He built the first station on the site in 1871.

It stood until 1902,

when a catastrophic collision

between two steam-powered passenger trains in an approach tunnel

led the New York Central Railroad Company

to switch to electricity

and Grand Central was completely redesigned for a new age,

with 49 platforms over two levels.

The steam railyards north of the station were built over.

Above them rose Park Avenue,

offering some of the most prestigious real estate

in the world, whose revenues flowed to Vanderbilt.

He was a shrewd man.

And so shrewd he made sure that his mark was going to be literally

engraved throughout here.

On the very tippy top of that clock,

that is an acorn and throughout this terminal,

you'll see acorns and oak leaf clusters aplenty.

It was a Vanderbilt family symbol

because from the acorn rose a mighty oak.

It certainly grew.

In its heyday, Grand Central was the gateway to the nation.

A place from where millions of eager migrants set out west

to forge a new life in the New World.

-Vanderbilt Hall.

-Yes. It has...quite a history to it.

Because, here on this magnificent floor,

you will notice that there are little scoops.

People would be sitting on the benches, awaiting their trains

that would take them to new lives, to a new adventure.

So they'd be sitting here, anxiously shuffling their feet,

as they were about to begin an entire new life

across these United States.

Today, distances travelled from the terminal are more modest.

How many people on this train?

Right, we've got 1,200 people on this train alone.

Now, we have more tracks and track platforms

than any other station in the world.

We have 42 tracks serving 63 track platforms

and trains are arriving here every 47 seconds

during the morning rush hour and these numbers are greater than ever.

It's an unbelievable building.

-Do you ever lose your sense of awe for it?

-No, I never do.

My favourite part of the terminal

is not the building in and of itself,

but people's expressions as they come from out of town,

from the Midwest, Europe,

and they come in here and they see this place, wide-eyed.

-And that includes my face?

-Yes, there's that too.

For strangers passing through the imposing Terminal Hall,

the challenge is how to find the right track

and information on their train.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-So my name's Michael, what's yours?

-Michael, I'm CP.

Great to see you, CP. How did you learn all these train times?

-Do you sit down and study?

-Sometimes I do. If they do change us...

-Just a moment.

-OK.

-Hi, excuse me.

-Can you point me to...?

-I need track 29.

-29 what?

-Um, it's rail, to Poughkeepsie.

Oh, you want to go to Poughkeepsie.

-All right, young lady, hurry up, one minute, right behind me.

-OK.

Mm-hm.

So, New Yorkers, of course, have a worldwide reputation

for being THE most polite people in the world, is that right?

-No, that's not polite. No, they're not polite.

-No?

Sometimes, they can be very rude, but you go with it.

-Yeah?

-We're dealing with people.

But you're trained to be polite back, are you?

I'm born polite, I can't help it.

All those people pouring into New York,

the human fuel that makes this motor run.

Yes. Yes, yes. But it's fun.

And, like so many before me,

I leave these majestic marble halls to begin my adventure.

Before I explore today's Manhattan at ground-level,

an eagle-eyed view is in order.

A short journey north from Grand Central

takes me to the Rockefeller Centre.

This vast complex was constructed

by the oil tycoon and philanthropist John D Rockefeller,

during the Great Depression and opened in 1933.

I'm heading to the top.

Appleton's map of New York City, 1879,

and it's all completely recognisable.

There's the Hudson River to my right, the East River to my left.

Down there, where the Freedom Tower is,

that was old Colonial New York,

and you could recognise it on the map

because all the streets are higgledy-piggledy.

But the city had planned its expansion on a grid system

and you can see the grid from here.

You can't maybe see the streets but you can tell that all the buildings

are in the same orientation, they're facing me directly.

But you have to remember, when this map was published,

there were no skyscrapers.

It was all little houses and warehouses and storehouses

and everything that's happened since has transformed the city.

But it's all developed according to plan.

Bounded by water, Manhattan Island had limited space to grow.

The answer? Push the limits of technology and build up.

Here, you can see how skyscrapers began.

This is the wonderful Flatiron Building.

They were made possible by a new way of producing steel,

patented by an Englishman, Henry Bessemer.

And that meant that you could have a building that was elegant

and slim from bottom to top.

And then the decoration, well,

that's drawn from Classical Greece and from the Renaissance.

And so, the technology was British, the decoration was European,

but the boldness, the chutzpah, was all American.

One early investor in the Bessemer steel-making process

in the United States was Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie.

Steel rails were more durable than iron and, in 1875, Carnegie built

a steel plant devoted to the needs of the expanding railroad industry.

He became one of the wealthiest men in America.

A subway journey downtown,

followed by a walk through the financial district,

takes me to a restaurant that regularly hosted Carnegie,

the still-thriving Delmonico's.

Delmonico's, according to Appleton's,

is, "One of the best restaurants in the world

"and famous for its elaborate dinners".

This is where those with the Midas touch would meet and eat.

Open since 1837,

some 40 years before the publication of my guide book,

Delmonico's was the first restaurant in the United States

to feature tablecloths.

And it claims to have invented many dishes, including Eggs Benedict.

On the menu tonight is their famous Lobster Newburg.

-Ah, here it is.

-Here we go.

-Wow.

-Beautiful Lobster Newburg.

-Thank you.

-That is impressive.

'My dining companion is a historian

'from the City University of New York, Nora Slonimsky.'

Oh, that's delicious.

Nora, I suggested this restaurant

because apparently it was very popular during the Gilded Age.

What was the Gilded Age?

The Gilded Age was a period in American history

from about 1870 to 1890 and the phrase basically expresses

sort of the paradox of the changes that are happening in this moment,

that, on the one hand, you have this incredible technological innovation,

innovation really is personified by the railroads

and railroad expansion, in which incredible wealth

and incredible economic expansion is happening,

but on the other, that wealth is very misleading

because there are a lot of people who are not benefitting.

So, in that sense, it's gilded.

After the Civil War,

the railroads bring together this vast single economy

but they also, I suppose, unite the country metaphorically,

after the Civil War. Is that true?

Yes, I would say they do.

So the railroad sort of had to be sold, in a lot of ways,

to the American people in this period

and one of the issues they were selling

was that "we can truly unite the country".

In 1869, four years after the end of the American Civil War,

the first trans-continental railroad was completed in Utah.

By the end of the century, the railways were by far

the biggest business in the United States,

whose tentacles connected every sizable community.

Much like the internet, I think, is today,

the railroad was sort of this transformative moment for modernity,

for nationalism, for sort of society as a whole in this time.

Who were the big figures in this period?

Oh, well, there's several,

but I would say perhaps the most iconic figure, definitely someone

who would probably eat here, would've been Jay Gould.

And Jay Gould is from New York and he started his career

as a book-keeper to a blacksmith, actually.

And then, relatively quickly, right before the Civil War,

began investing in New York railroads, local railroads.

And after the Civil War,

when that opportunity...for really just westward expansion

exploded, he really capitalised on that very quickly and began,

through a series of business connections

and government relations to invest very heavily in railroads.

At the height of Gould's power in the 1880s,

he controlled one seventh of the entire American rail network.

Although tycoons' business practices

and their treatment of workers varied,

Gould and fellow industrialists like Vanderbilt

and Carnegie were popularly labelled "robber barons".

It's not a flattering name, by any means,

and what it basically combines

is a pretty longstanding American scepticism about aristocracy

with a dislike for sort of common criminality.

And were they? Were they dishonest?

Yes, I would say a lot of the practices they engaged with were pretty dishonest.

They were very brutal to their employees,

they were very ruthless with their competitors and they relied very,

very heavily on sort of corrupt political connections

to ensure that their enterprises succeeded.

The railroads could not have been built without federal support

and someone like Gould knew that.

And Gould's most probably infamous relationship

was with a New York City politician, William or "Boss" Tweed,

and their dynamic was very close.

When Boss Tweed was finally caught for embezzlement charges,

Gould paid his, I believe, 1 million bond.

Do you think it's conceivable, then, that a robber baron met here

-with a corrupt politician, over a Lobster Newburg?

-I would...

I would absolutely say that there's a very strong possibility that

Jay Gould and William "Boss" Tweed could have sat right over there.

No money has changed hands this evening,

but it has been a pleasure dining with you.

-Thank you.

-Thank you so much.

New York might be the city that never sleeps,

but after that fine dinner, I won't attempt to keep up.

I'll let the 24-hour hum of Manhattan continue without me.

This morning, I'm starting the day in Manhattan's Central Park,

with the morning papers.

New York newspaper review, 1879.

In the New York Times, under the heading "John Smith Cannibal",

we learn that the Massachusetts herdsman, who eats reptiles

and would like to eat human flesh, is a former marine.

There's a report from London, England,

that a Parliamentary committee's report on electric lighting

says that sufficient progress has been made

to encourage the belief that electricity has an important future,

for illuminating and as a source of mechanical power.

The New York Herald covers its front page with an advertisement for ale,

but inside, a harrowing description of a railroad accident.

It seems that one of the most remarkable accidents of the age

occurred on the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad.

The train was going at 30mph when it jumped the track

and the coupling of the rear first class coach snapped in two

and the coach went rolling over and over,

down the declivity, a distance of 30 feet, to the Greenbrier River.

So...gory tales of crime, predictions of the future

and accidents.

Nothing changes much.

At the eastern edge of Central Park, on 5th Avenue and 82nd Street,

Appleton's says that I'll find,

"the spacious building "of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

"a fine collection of the Old Masters,

"loaned by the wealthy virtuous of the city.

Many of the robber barons who played hardball in the boardroom

proved generous philanthropists outside it.

Today, the museum is the third-most-visited

in the United States and the seventh most popular globally.

I'm meeting Jim Moske, archivist at the Met,

to find out how the riches of the railway trade provided a boon

for the city's art lovers.

Jim, what is so striking to me, as a European,

is that this amazing collection of art is not a national gallery.

-How did it all start?

-That's right, it's not a national gallery.

The Metropolitan, it was founded in 1870

by a group of public-spirited citizens of New York

who were art collectors, businessmen,

financiers and bankers and the like.

Railroads were a big way of making a fortune in the 19th century.

Are they strongly connected with the origins of the museum?

Many of the early trustees of the museum

were involved in the railroad industry.

In fact, the museum's first president

was a man named John Taylor Johnston,

who was an art collector and a patron of the arts,

but he was also a businessman

who was the president of the Central New Jersey Railroad.

And do we have a good feel for what kind of a man he was?

Yeah, Johnston was a very curious man in his business matters

and did lots of research before he leapt into any investment,

so, as a person interested in financing railroad construction,

he travelled the rails quite often himself.

Johnston remained president of the Met from 1870 to 1879.

As well as running the museum,

he seeded its galleries from his personal art collection.

Now, I know you're obsessed with railroads,

so I'd like you to take a look at this picture

by American genre artist Edward Lamson Henry.

And this was actually commissioned by John Taylor Johnston.

He wanted a scene like this to decorate his home to remind him

of how he was making his money, I guess.

Johnston paid Henry 500 for this painting.

Henry at that time was quite a young artist

and it was a tidy sum for him at that point in his career.

And, as a European, may I just say

that is the archetypal United States locomotive?

So, I'd like to show you a painting by the artist John Singer Sargent

of the second president of the Metropolitan Museum, Henry Marquand.

-How had he made his money?

-In railroads.

Yeah, if you were a millionaire in New York,

it was the thing to do to have your portrait painted by Sargent

or another prominent artist of the day.

Any idea what Sargent might have got for a portrait like that?

-They paid Sargent 3,100 American dollars for this picture.

-Wow.

That's a lot of money at the time, but, eh,

a mere nothing compared with a railroad fortune.

That's true.

As the Gilded Age reached its zenith,

the Metropolitan benefitted from lavish bequests made by tycoons.

James, what an extraordinary work of art that table is.

How did it find its way to the Metropolitan Museum?

It was originally made in the 19th century

for the Vanderbilt family and it was displayed prominently

in the library of their 5th Avenue mansion.

Many of these tycoons actually made great donations of art.

Some of them were known as robber barons.

I'm wondering, why did they make donations?

Is there a paradox here, or is there an explanation?

Well, I think, for many of them who had longstanding ties

to the Metropolitan and other institutions,

they felt genuine senses of wanting to share their aesthetic experience

with the general public. Others of them, frankly, I think

were motivated by wanting to enhance their public image

by making sizable, you know,

substantial contributions of artworks to places like the Met.

And now these tycoons are perhaps better remembered for their virtues

than for what may have been their sins.

That's very true.

In my Appleton's Guide, even in 1879,

when it comes to theatres and amusements,

there's one street name that occurs again and again.

They say the neon lights are bright,

they say there's magic in the air...

on Broadway.

After the advent of electric light in the early 20th century,

theatres on Broadway dazzled audiences with their signage,

hence its name, The Great White Way.

The demands of the American Civil War from 1861,

for troop movement and military supply,

caused an expansion of the railroads.

When hostilities ended in 1865,

Broadway theatres found they could send productions on tour

by train for the first time.

Originally, Manhattan's performance district was downtown,

but after the subway expanded to Times Square in 1904,

theatres mushroomed in the streets

around the junction of 7th Avenue and Broadway.

New Yorkers flocked to performances, as they do today.

Without a ticket for a show,

I've heard of a place where resting Broadway actors

keep their song and dance routines sharp - Ellen's Stardust Diner,

home of the singing waiters.

We have something very special for you this evening.

It's for a special guest who's here today, Michael...

ALL: ..who loves trains.

This one's for you, Michael.

# Pardon me, boy Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?

# Right on track 29

# Boy, you can give me a shine

# When you hear the whistle blowin' eight to the bar

# Then you know that Tennessee is not very far

# Shovel all the coal in Gotta keep it rollin'

# Whoo-whoo, Chattanooga There you are

# So, Chattanooga Choo Choo

# Won't you choo-choo me home?

# Climb aboard

# Choo-choo

# Chattanooga Choo Choo Won't you choo-choo me home? #

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

There is nothing you can name that is anything like a Manhattan dame.

Choo-choo!

The New York City that was briefly capital of the United States

under President George Washington

was a small cluster of low-rise streets

at the southern tip of Manhattan.

A century later, at the time of my Appleton's,

buildings and railroads had swarmed uptown.

And then, following a Gilded Age of super-rich tycoons,

the city sprouted skyscrapers, Grand Central Terminal and an art museum.

The growth of New York City

has been more dramatic than anything that's yet appeared on Broadway.

Next time, I get into a scrap on the Lower East Side.

I used to be in politics myself, actually.

-But I didn't buy any votes.

-We don't "buy" votes!

I try to grasp the scale of European emigration to America.

This hall was designed to process 4,000 people and sometimes,

at its peak, it processed as many as three times that per day.

And I get a poignant glimpse of the future for transport in Manhattan.

The sun will shine directly into this building

at the moment the last tower fell.