History of the city of New York, 1609-1909, Part 45

Author: Leonard, John William, 1849-
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: New York, The Journal of commerce and commercial bulletin
Number of Pages: 962

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The Municipal Gas Company established a plant for the manufacture of water gas on West Forty-fourth Street, and after it had proved a suc- cess a number of modifications of it were promulgated. Up to about the year 1855, five candles to the cubic foot of gas burned per hour was regarded as a very good figure. To-day it is possible to get twenty-five candles when the gas is burned in a properly constructed mantle burner.

In 1859 and 1860 stove coal was worth about $5.00 per ton ; and coke from the gas works was a popular fuel in their vicinity. Carts delivered it at $2.50 per chaldron. It was also sold by the bushel, but the consumers had to go to the gas works to get it. During the winter season the gas holders of the New York Gas Light Company were charged with coal tar in the cups, in order to prevent them from freezing, and it was not until 1865 that tar was displaced by the use of steam-a method that has been maintained from that day to this.

A very important forward stride was made by the discovery, in 1868, of the value of the by-products of coal tar and ammonia. The actual and practical making of water gas, although it had been pronounced to be suc- cessful years before, did not really begin until 1875, in the West Forty- fourth Street works, under the management of William H. Bradley, now the chief engineer of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, who saw the possibility of the water-gas system as invented by M. Tessie du Motay; and while the inventor had at no time made a success of it, it began to flourish immediately after Mr. Bradley took hold of it, and applied his knowledge and experience to its manufacture.

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HISTORY OF NEW YORK

New York was the third city of the Union to have a gas works, having been preceded by Baltimore and Boston. The franchise in this city was granted May 12, 1823, with the specification that the gas was to be of a quality, brilliancy or intensity equal to the gas in use for the public lamps in the city of London, England. These public lamps were furnished at a price equal to that charged for the sperm oil lamps which they superseded. The company operated south of Grand Street, and ten years after its for- mation, a franchise was granted to the Manhattan Gas Light Company, to operate north of Grand Street.

Under the original arrangement with the city, the provision which had previously applied to the sperm oil city lamps, that they should not be lit on the nights when the moon shone, also applied to gas lamps; but in 1853, the "moonlight schedule" was abolished and the hours of lighting increased from 2300 to 3833 per year, and in that year, for the first time, the gas lamps exceeded the oil lamps in number.

In 1855 a third franchise was granted to the Harlem Gas Light Com- pany to operate north of Seventy-ninth Street. In that year the popula- tion of the old city of New York was 813,000. There were 13,443 street lamps and the annual cost of lighting them was $400,000. In 1858 the Metropolitan Gas Light Company received a franchise for the district between Thirty-fourth and Seventy-ninth Streets. They did not supply street lamps until 1864, at which time about three thousand lamps of the Manhattan Company were transferred to the Metropolitan Gas Light Company.

In 1863 the combined capitalization of the gas companies in New York City was $7,900,000. In the year 1870 the population had increased to 950,000, and another corporation, the New York Mutual Gas Light Company, was formed. After that the Knickerbocker Gas Light Com- pany was organized, which supplied private consumers only. In 1899 the Consolidated Gas Company of New York acquired control of all the exist- ing corporations, with the exception of two small companies, supplying out- lying sections in the borough of the Bronx, and later the company also came into the control of the electric lighting companies.

At the present date (1910) about eighteen million cubic feet of gas are consumed each day. The stupendous total of eight hundred and ten thousand tons of coal and ninety thousand gallons of oil are required to furnish gas for one year to the consumers in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. This furnishes a gas of twenty-two candle power, of higher grade than is furnished in any other American city. It requires 20,750 cars to transfer the coal, each car carrying forty tons, which means a train 127 miles long. When this coal and oil is transformed

459

PRESENT GAS SUPPLY IN NEW YORK

into gas, it is carried under the surface of the avenues and streets of the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, through 1742 miles of mains, and nearly one thousand miles of service pipes. The mains have increased in size with the growth of the city, until now a part of the system includes a main sixty inches in diameter, the largest gas main in the world.

In July, 1910, there were in use in New York City 777,34I gas meters, of which number 203,017 are prepayment, or "quarter" meters. On one day the gas companies handle 10, 174 orders; the term "order" mean- ing requests from consumers for burner tips, requests to have gas ranges examined or trifling repairs made to them, all of which require the services of 1016 men. On one day the index or meter readers read 27,463 meters. The gas sales per capita in New York City average $8.27.

Included in the wonderful development in consumption of gas, the use of this ideal product for fuel purposes, is no less remarkable than that for illumination. The degree of perfection to which stoves, ranges, heaters and other devices for the burning of gas for fuel have been brought, have given it the lead in New York City as a fuel for culinary purposes, and adds very largely to the cleanliness of the houses and the comfort of the householders of New York.

The officers of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York are: George B. Cortelyou, president; W. R. Addicks, L. R. Gawtry and R. A. Carter, vice presidents ; J. A. Bennett, treasurer: Benjamin Whitely, assistant treasurer ; R. A. Carter, secretary; C. C. Simpson, assistant secretary ; F. L. Lambrecht, auditor; Edwin North, purchasing agent. Directors: H. E. Gawtry, chairman, Samuel Sloan, William Rockefeller, Moses Taylor, G. F. Baker, F. A. Vanderlip, S. S. Palmer, W. R. Addicks, A. N. Brady, J. W. Sterling, G. B. Cortelyou, W. P. Bliss and M. Greer.

A retrospective view of the past quarter of a century reveals many wonderful scientific developments, especially in the field of electrical engi- neering. During this period the practical application of electrical energy has passed from narrow confines until now not only New York, but every large city is largely dependent upon it for the conduct of its ordinary busi- ness relations. Electricity applied to lighting purposes preceded its employ- ment for heat and power by half a dozen years, but its rate of progress has been more rapid.

Prior to 1882 there had been several demonstrations in Europe of the practical application of electric current to lighting purposes by Siemens, in Germany, and by the Russian engineer, Jablochkoff, with his candle, a form of arc lamp which was exhibited on the Avenue de l'Opera, in Paris, in 1878, and six months later on the Thames, and on Waterloo Bridge, in London.

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HISTORY OF NEW YORK

McKim, Mead & White, Architects

UNITED STATES POST OFFICE BUILDING Eighth Avenue, Thirty-first and Thirty-second Streets

461

ELECTRIC SERVICE IN NEW YORK

In 1879 arc lighting systems were being developed in this country by Charles F. Brush and by Elihu Thomson.

Thomas A. Edison effected great changes in electric lighting methods by the introduction of the incandescent lamp. He had exhibited his carbon filament lamp as early as 1879, but it was not until 1880 that any of these lamps were seen out of the laboratory. With the development of incan- descent lighting and a comprehensive system covering all of the elements necessary for the generation, distribution and sale of electricity, its com- mercial use made such a wonderful and rapid advance that Edison's name will always be associated with it.

The first central station to be utilized for the commercial distribution of electricity for incandescent lighting was started in 1882, on Pearl Street, near Fulton, in New York City, lighting a territory covering an area of about one square mile. This station was started under the auspices of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, now The New York Edison Company. There was not a single electric motor in use for power purposes at that time, and no electric heating or cooking devices had been developed.

After this system of producing and distributing electricity had been developed, various applications of electrical energy appeared rapidly, owing to the creative genius of Edison, Brush, Weston, Thomson and Sprague, until to-day there is more money expended for electricity than for daily bread.

As an index to the rapid progress of this art, it is interesting to cite the magnitude of The New York Edison Company's system, which is the largest of its kind in existence, supplying upward of ninety thousand cus- tomers. From its great Waterside station, capable of developing continu- ously over two hundred and fifty thousand horse power, a network of feeders extends out to the twenty-six substations in Manhattan and the Bronx, from which the distributing service of the company is effected, cover- ing practically every street in the populated territory of both boroughs.

The company's supply mains furnish electricity to an installation on the customer's premises, representing an equivalent of over seven million and five hundred thousand standard (fifty watt) incandescent electric lamps, represented by over four million incandescent lamps, forty thousand arc lamps and over two hundred and fifty thousand horse power in electric motors.

The largest supply of energy is furnished to the business districts, where the company, through numerous electric elevators, supplies what is practically the vertical transportation of the city in the numerous high office buildings.

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HISTORY OF NEW YORK

The supply of current to the purely residential district is continually extending, so that practically every modern house or apartment must be equipped with electricity for lighting, and for the numerous other appli- cations contributing to the convenience of modern life; but it is not only in its household applications that electricity has made the greatest progress, but in the commercial applications, such as the equipment of factories, mills and industrial establishments generally.

In all of the largest cities, central station service is gradually displa- cing the private electric plant, reducing the smoke nuisance and contribu- ting to the well-being of the community by placing at the command of the small shopkeeper and the modest factory a liberal supply of power at a minimum of cost.

In the evening, the Great White Way, with its myriads of incandes- cent lamps, in attractive signs and decorative emblems, converts night into day and forms a centre of attraction alike for the visitor and the pleasure-loving native.

Electric vehicles are rapidly replacing the worn-out and jaded horse equipments, in turn contributing to the economical and effective solution of the transportation problem. :

New applications of the electric current are constantly being devel- oped, and the field of the electrical industry is constantly widening and the central station companies are rapidly enlarging their output and expand- ing the territory which they serve.

Of the public utilities none has been a greater aid to commerce than those dealing with long distance rapid transit of intelligence and speech. "What hath God wrought?" was the first message flashed over the first telegraph line installed for public service by the inventor Morse. Although that inven- tion and the telephone have ceased to be the wonders they then were, because of their familiarity and universality, they have wrought great revolutions in business and social life. The first telegraph line was between Baltimore and Washington, in 1844, and the next was that which reached New York from the Jersey shore, in 1845, the first telegraph cable line in the world, the first telegraph message ever received in New York coming via that cable to a re- ceiver temporarily installed in the kitchen of the Audubon Mansion, on the banks of the Hudson (see page 407), then occupied by Jesse W. Benedict, a leading New York lawyer, who received the message, Samuel F. B. Morse being at the sending end of the wire on the Jersey side.

From that beginning the system has been developed to a point of utmost usefulness to business, and an enormous proportion of the trans- action of the commerce of New York is carried on by land telegraph or ocean cable.

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THE FIRST TELEPHONE LINE

Even more strongly entrenched in business and social usefulness is the telephone system, as it has been developed in the City of New York. To trace the New York Telephone Company back to its first pair of crude telephones, that were laughed at as "scientific toys," it is barely thirty-three years of age. It is the product, for the most part, of men who are still alive and busy. Such has been its marvelous growth that it has, in one generation, swept past industries and professions that have been hundreds of years in existence.

The inventor himself, Alexander Graham Bell, exhibited the first tele- phones that were seen in New York City, at the St. Denis Hotel, as early as May II, 1877. Two lines of telegraph wire were borrowed for the occasion, one running to Brooklyn and one to New Brunswick. A few invited guests were present, and the result encouraged Bell to give three exhibitions in Chickering Hall on the week following. After these exhibitions two New York business men, Charles A. Cheever and Hilborne L. Roosevelt, ventured, on August 29, 1877, to organize "The Telephone Company of New York." Cheever was a dealer in rubber goods and Roosevelt owned an organ factory on West Eighteenth Street.

Both Cheever and Roosevelt were able men. They had succeeded in other lines of business; but the task of establishing a telephone system in the greatest of American cities was too much for them. The most that they could do was to string a few private lines, which were used mainly for exhi- bitions, the first of these being between Cheever's office in the Tribune Building and a Telegraph Exchange for lawyers at 145 Fulton Street. owned by William A. Childs.

At the end of ten months Cheever and Roosevelt were delighted to sell out for $18,000, to a group of men who had larger capital. These men were Amzi S. Dodd, founder of Dodd's Express; T. N. Vail, of Washing- ton; Edwin Holmes, founder of a burglar-alarm system; and William H. Woolverton, of the New York Transfer Company. On the first of May, 1878, they organized "The Bell Telephone Company of New York." Edwin Holmes was its first president, and its capital was $100,000. A temporary exchange was tried by making use of the Holmes burglar- alarm wires at 194 Broadway; and an executive office was established at 4 East Twentieth Street.

Two months later Theodore N. Vail came to New York as the general manager of the original Bell Company. He was well known as the superin- tendent of the Railway Mail Service, at Washington, and his influence soon placed the New York Company upon a better basis. He raised $60,000 of new capital from Second Assistant Postmaster-General Brady; Henry G. Pearson, postmaster of New York; John D. Harrison, and others. With this impetus the young enterprise began to gain general favor, and in

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HISTORY OF NEW YORK

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Francis H. Kimball, Architect

CITY INVESTING BUILDING

GROWTH OF THE TELEPHONE SYSTEM 465

March, 1879, the first actual telephone exchange was started at 82 Nassau Street.

In this year the president of the company was T. N. Vail, and the members of the Executive Committee were Henry G. Pearson, John D. Har- rison, and Amzi S. Dodd. Henry W. Pope was the superintendent. Thomas D. Lockwood was bookkeeper. Charles E. Chinnock was electrician. Lewis Miller was wire chief. D. N. Adee was canvasser. A. K. Thompson and C. A. Wiley were operators. And the business office was at 923 Broadway.

The territory granted to this company was a circle of land, sixty-six miles in diameter, with the City Hall as the centre. Also for good measure it received the whole of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and Long Island. Subscribers were charged $60 a year, and later $120 a year, and given one month's free trial. The first telephone directory was a small card, showing 252 names; and the first switchboards held a dozen wires apiece. Iron wire was used, in single strands; and the whole equipment, equally through lack of knowledge and lack of capital, was so crude and cheap that it would be scarcely recognizable to any telephone engineer of to-day.

Competition, too, for a time doubled the difficulties and decreased the profits. The "Gold and Stock Telegraph Company," which was a subsidiary of the Western Union, opened a telephone exchange at 198 Broadway, and gave battle to the Bell Company. This struggle was soon brought to a close by mutual agreement; and in 1880 the two contestants united in "The Metro- politan Telephone Company," with Colonel W. H. Forbes, of Boston, as its first president. The only competitor now left in the field was the Child's Law Telegraph system, which had been given the right to operate not more than six hundred lines; and in 1884 this little exchange was merged in the Metro- politan. Since then there has never been any degree of competition in the development of the telephone system in the City of New York.

The Metropolitan Telephone Company began its career hopefully with $125,000 in the treasury; but all this was wiped out by a sleet storm in the winter of 1881. It issued bonds to the amount of $100,000; but no broker could be found who would offer them for sale to his clients, and the company was obliged to sell them at a low price to its shareholders. In spite of these difficulties, it persisted, and by 1883 it had rebuilt and extended its lines, with eight exchanges and more than three thousand subscribers.

In 1885, Theodore N. Vail became president. He resigned four years later, after having pushed to completion the building of an elaborate under- ground system of doubled copper wires. Following Vail came Charles Fred- erick Cutler, who had previously been president of "The New York and New Jersey Telephone Company.", Cutler headed the Metropolitan Telephone Company for eighteen years. Under his management it continued to prosper

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HISTORY OF NEW YORK

until, at his death in 1907, there were more telephones within thirty miles of City Hall than there had been in the whole United States in 1885.

Theodore N. Vail was now called for a third time to the presidency of the company, which, in 1896, had been renamed the "New York Telephone Company." He mapped out, on still larger lines, the same policy of organiza- tion and development ; and retired early in 1910 in favor of Union N. Bethell, then vice president, who had entered the company as general manager in 1893. Mr. Bethell stands to-day as the official head of the company. He, too, repre- sents the larger telephony, and has made the company more efficient by extend- ing the scope of its organization.

In the development of the art of telephony, much notable work has been done in the City of New York. Here, under the busiest of streets and in the highest of buildings, has been woven a network of wires that is now known as the world-wonder of telephone engineering. Here has been the point of departure for the long-distance lines, which linked New York to Boston in 1887, to Chicago in 1892, and to Omaha in 1896. Here the message-rate policy has been developed to its highest point, with the result that it costs much less to be put in touch with four million five hundred thousand people than it did to be put in touch with five hundred people in 1897.

It may be truly said that the City of New York has become for all coun- tries the university of telephony. It has been called by foreigners "the Mecca of telephone men." Here J. J. Carty invented the "bridging bell," and became the first great educator of telephone engineers. Here E. F. Sherwood trained an army of five thousand operators until a call can be answered to-day in three and two-fifth seconds. Here H. F. Thurber built up the largest of tele- phone plants, with the highest type of construction. And the whole equip- ment of plant and employees has here been developed to so high a degree of efficiency that New York has now the most perfect methods of intercommu- nication, and the shortest business day of any city in the world.

The New York Telephone Company has now grown to be a state-wide organization, and more. It includes a small section of Connecticut and the most populous part of New Jersey. It comprises one-ninth of the telephony of the United States, and one-seventh of the entire Bell system. It is so extensive, in fact, that it represents no less than eight per cent. of the tele- phone business of the world.

To give service to its ten million clients, it has spent $114,000,000 upon its plant and general equipment. It has strung two million miles of copper wire, most of it in conduits under the streets of cities. It has organized this unthinkable mileage of wire into five hundred exchanges, linked it to seven hundred and fifty thousand telephones, placed the whole mechanism in charge of twenty-one thousand employees, and speeded it up to such a point of

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THE NEW MUNICIPAL BUILDING

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McKim, Mead & White, Architects

THE MUNICIPAL BUILDING

468

HISTORY OF NEW YORK

efficiency that it is now handling a traffic of more than three million conver- sations a day. One-half, or a trifle more of the bulk of this great company is within the limits of the City of New York. There are here fifty-six exchanges, eleven thousand employees, three hundred eighty-five thousand telephones, one million miles of underground wire, and more than one million six hundred thousand conversations in an average day. Incredible as it may seem to foreigners, it is true that in this one American city there are more telephones than in London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Shef- field, Bristol and Belfast. Even in the list of nations, the City of New York stands in fourth place in the development of telephony, having surpassed all foreign countries except Germany and Great Britain.

In the course of the narrative relation of the development and growth of the City of New York in this volume, the population at various periods has been stated. It will be very appropriate therefore to close it with the figures of the Thirteenth Census, showing that the population of the City of New York in 1910 numbered 4,766,883 souls.

By boroughs the figures are: Manhattan, 2,331,542, compared with the 1,850,093 of the Twelfth Census, an increase of 481,449, or 26 per cent .; borough of the Bronx, 430,980, as against 200,507, an increase of 230,473, or 114.9 per cent. in ten years; Brooklyn Borough, 1,634,351, in comparison with the figures 1,166,583 returned in 1900, an increase of 467,769, or 40.I per cent .; Queens Borough, 284,041, where there were 152,999 ten years before, an increase of 181,042, or 85.6 per cent .; and Richmond Borough, 85,969, as against the 67,021 of the previous census, an increase of 15,328, or 28.3 per cent. In the entire city the figure of 4,766,883, as compared with the 3,437,202 of the Twelfth Census, shows an increase of 1, 329,681, or 38.7 per cent.

It is unfortunate, so far as comparison is concerned, that the population of Jersey City, Newark and hundreds of populous places contiguous to the business centre, and as much a part of Commercial New York as the bor- oughs of Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens or Richmond, do not show in census figures as a part of the metropolis. Politically separate, but in material interests an integral part of it, these New Jersey centres added make Commer- cial New York a much closer second to London than is disclosed by the official figures.

Oliver Lippincott, Photographer

BLAIR & COMPANY BUILDING

BIOGRAPHIES

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HISTORY OF NEW YORK

JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN

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JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN

B' EFORE transplantation in America, the paternal ancestry of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan was Welsh, his first American ancestor, Captain Miles Morgan, having been the youngest son in a prominent Glamorganshire family in Wales. He came via Bristol to America, arriving in Boston, a young man of twenty years of age, in April, 1636, joining a few weeks later the expedition headed by William Pynchon, which established a settlement at the junction of the Agawam River with the Connecticut River, in Massachu- setts. The settlement was first named Agawam, but was changed to Spring- field in 1640. Captain Morgan, who married Prudence Gilbert, a fellow pas- senger on the voyage from Bristol, became one of Springfield's foremost citi- zens and when, during King Philip's War, the settlement was sacked and burned, his blockhouse became the fortress of the place, and he held it against the besieging savages, after the burning of the town, until reinforcements from Hadley scattered the enemy. A bronze statue in the Court House Square of Springfield commemorates the patriotic service of this bold pioneer. The family remained prominent in Springfield for two centuries, and Junius Spen- cer Morgan, father of J. Pierpont Morgan, was born in West Springfield in 1813. He was a banker in Boston, New York and London, winning interna- tional distinction in finance. In London he was a partner of George Peabody & Company in the banking house which later became J. S. Morgan & Com- pany, of which he was head. He married Juliet Pierpont, and to them John Pierpont Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut, April 17, 1837.

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History of the city of New York, 1609-1909, Part 45

Author: Leonard, John William, 1849- Publication date: 1910 Publisher: New York, The Journal of commerce and commercial bulletin Number of Pages: 962

Author: Leonard, John William, 1849-
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: New York, The Journal of commerce and commercial bulletin
Number of Pages: 962