The Cincinnati Subway: History of Rapid Transit


Book Description

While Cincinnati intended their new subway, started in 1920, to be a shining jewel for public transportation, the story of its origin and ultimate failure show the history of the Queen City. Cincinnati emerged from a tumultuous 19th century as a growing metropolis committed to city planning. The most ambitious plan of the early twentieth century, the Cincinnati Subway, was doomed to failure. Construction began in 1920 and ended in 1927 when the money had run out. Today, two miles of empty subway tunnels still lie beneath Cincinnati, waiting to be used. The Cincinnati Subway tells the whole story, from the turbulent times in the 1880s to the ultimate failure of "Cincinnati's White Elephant." Along the way, the reader will learn about what was happening in Cincinnati during the growth of the subway-from the Courthouse Riots in 1884 to life in the Queen City during World War II.




Cincinnati's Incomplete Subway


Book Description

What of those ghostly catacombs that lie dormant below city streets? Those subway tunnels, never finished, never filled with the screeches of trains and the busy commotion of commuters. Just there. Dead. You've heard of the subway's demise. The tunnels were too narrow. The city was too broke. A grand miscalculation. Well, most of what you've heard is, sorry to say, untrue. The popular story of the subway's demise is myth-laden and as incomplete as the original plan. The full story, long buried in mounds of public records dispersed in libraries, is now revealed. Local author Jacob R. Mecklenborg emerges from those dusty tomes with a fresh, thought-provoking, full examination of the subway's demise and what its future might hold.




Cincinnati on the Go


Book Description

Cincinnati on the Go explores the various modes of transportation that helped people get around in the first half of the 20th century, providing a unique view of the Queen City through the eyes of her everyday commuters. This volume features historic images of river transportation, street railways, city buses, steam railroads, the first automobiles, and wonderful, rare street scenes. Author Allen J. Singer expands on the transportation photographs in the previously released The Cincinnati Subway, inviting the reader up and out of the abandoned subway tunnels and on a visual tour through the historic streets of the Queen City on her riverboats, streetcars, cable cars, railroads, interurbans, and buses.




Cincinnati Subway & Rail Rapid Transit Compilation


Book Description

Perhaps the time has come to complete a greater Cincinnati rail transit system that's been over a century in the making







722 Miles


Book Description

When it first opened on October 27, 1904, the New York City subway ran twenty-two miles from City Hall to 145th Street and Lenox Avenue—the longest stretch ever built at one time. From that initial route through the completion of the IND or Independent Subway line in the 1940s, the subway grew to cover 722 miles—long enough to reach from New York to Chicago. In this definitive history, Clifton Hood traces the complex and fascinating story of the New York City subway system, one of the urban engineering marvels of the twentieth century. For the subway's centennial the author supplies a new foreward explaining that now, after a century, "we can see more clearly than ever that this rapid transit system is among the twentieth century's greatest urban achievements."




Interborough Rapid Transit


Book Description










A Century of Subways


Book Description

The transit historian and author of Under the Sidewalks of New York delivers a lively and authoritative history of New York City’s fabled subway. On the afternoon of October 27, 1904, ordinary New Yorkers descended beneath the sidewalks for the first time to ride the electric-powered trains of the newly inaugurated Interborough Rapid Transit System. More than a century later, the subway has expanded greatly, weaving its way into the fabric of New York’s unique and diverse urban life. In A Century of Subways, transit historian Brian J. Cudahy offers a fascinating tribute to New York’s storied and historic subway system, from its earliest beginnings and many architectural achievements, to the ways it helped shape today’s modern metropolis. Taking a fresh look at one of the marvels of the twentieth century, Cudahy creates a vivid sense of this extraordinary system and the myriad ways the city was transformed once New Yorkers started riding below the ground.