Steam City by David Schley

Author:David Schley [Schley, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS000000 History / General
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

Systems for Through Trade

The tunnel system’s origins lay in the rivalry between the B&O and the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1858, Maryland’s legislature chartered a line called the Baltimore & Potomac (B&P) to link southern Maryland with Baltimore. The B&P charter contained a provision allowing the construction of branch lines, including one to the District of Columbia. This drew the attention of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which purchased the B&P in 1867 with an eye to breaking the B&O’s monopoly on travel to and from the capital. As the Pennsylvania had already acquired the Northern Central, the B&P would complete its through route from New York City to Washington.51

When the city council authorized this new construction in 1869, it sought to make the new line as inconspicuous as possible. The B&P branched off from the tracks of the Northern Central in North Baltimore and passed through well-heeled residential districts in the northwestern part of the city before turning south to the capital. The ordinance authorizing the B&P to lay its tracks specified that all rails within the city limits would run below street grade in tunnels or deep cuts. The council charged the company with keeping its trains “entirely concealed from the view of persons using the streets,” ordered that steam ventilation take place “without annoyance to persons or property in proximity thereto,” and demanded that conductors use bells, not whistles, for signaling purposes, so as not to disturb the railroad’s neighbors. The ordinance also insisted that the B&P tunnel under or bridge over all the principal thoroughfares into town once it left the city limits. The company agreed to these strictures and the plans went forward despite opposition from residents of North Baltimore, who worried that the new rail infrastructure would harm their property and hamper movement uptown.52

The B&P’s tunnels and deep cuts represented one half of a new subterranean crosstown rail route. The other half was the Union Railroad, a short line financed in part by the city government, which ran partially belowground through northeast Baltimore before turning south outside the city limits to terminate at the wharves of the Canton industrial complex.53 Together, the B&P and Union Railroad system, completed by 1873 at the cost of around $5 million, allowed western freight to reach tidewater without breaking bulk. Transfers that took a day by surface rail in horse-drawn cars could move through town in as little as ninety minutes via the tunnels. More broadly, though, the new through route’s sponsors, including both the rail corporations and the municipality, contended that this underground system advanced a new vision for the city. The costly work of digging ventilated tunnels and building bridges represented a step toward, in the words of the Union Railroad’s president (and former B&O president) William G. Harrison, “remov[ing] from the now crowded streets the passage of trains.”54

For the railroads, going below the city avoided the troubles attendant with urban space and regulation. For urbanites, too, putting the tracks out of sight opened up the possibility of a new urbanism marked by expansion and free movement.

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