YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → How The Men Who Built The New York City SubWay Drilled Through Manhattan Bedrock Without Maps

How The Men Who Built The New York City SubWay Drilled Through Manhattan Bedrock Without Maps — Transcript

by Erased Labour · 4,208 words · 651 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00In 1899, a man named John Macdonald
0:02stepped into a gathering of financiers
0:04and informed them he could excavate a
0:06tunnel 21 mi in length beneath the most
0:09densely populated city in the United
0:11States, cutting through solid granite,
0:13slipping past the footings of a thousand
0:15buildings and crossing beneath rivers
0:17that had never been spanned by bridges
0:20or without damaging a single structure
0:22on the surface. The financiers replied
0:24that the municipality would never fund
0:26such a project. Macdonald said he
0:28understood. He had a construction
0:30partner, August Belmont, who was
0:32prepared to finance it privately. The
0:34city would receive the tunnel. Belmont
0:36would run it for 50 years. After that
0:38half century, control would revert to
0:40the city. A single vote in the board of
0:42alderman. It carried and on March 24th,
0:451900 at City Hall Park in lower
0:47Manhattan, the mayor of New York drove a
0:50silver spade into the soil. The
0:52spectators roared their approval. The
0:54newspapers printed the engineering
0:55drawings and then the city of New York
0:57unleashed 12,000 men into the
0:59underground. They had no mechanical
1:01tunnel boring machines. They had no GPS,
1:04no ground penetrating radar, no
1:06structural survey of what rested beneath
1:08the pavement. What they possessed was
1:10dynamite, compressed air drills, hand
1:13shovels, and diagrams drawn from
1:14recollection by men who had been
1:16excavating under New York for 30 years,
1:19and who knew the positions of the sewer
1:21lines because they had laid them with
1:22their own hands. The subway was not
1:25designed by engineers in corporate
1:26offices. It was constructed by men
1:29laboring in darkness 40 ft below
1:31Broadway, breathing air thick with
1:33granite dust that would slowly destroy a
1:35man's lungs if the explosions didn't
1:37kill him first. I have spent months
1:39pouring over the contractor's ledgers,
1:41the coroner's registers, and the
1:43accident reports submitted to the Rapid
1:45Transit Commission from 1900 through
1:471904. What I have discovered is a
1:50narrative that almost no one tells. The
1:52story of how the workers at the bottom
1:54of the excavation built the system that
1:56made modern New York City possible and
1:59the price they paid to accomplish it.
2:01Here is what you need to understand
2:02before any of it becomes clear. By 1900,
2:06New York City faced a crisis that was
2:08about to choke it. Manhattan Island is
2:1013 mi long and 2 mi wide at its broadest
2:13point. In 1900, 2 million people live
2:16there, not in the five burrows
2:17collectively, but on the island itself.
2:202 million human beings packed into 23
2:22square miles of bedrock. The elevated
2:24railways, the elves, had been operating
2:26since the 1870s. They carried half a
2:29million passengers daily. They were
2:31running at absolute capacity. The
2:33streets were jammed with horsedrawn
2:35wagons, electric trolley, push carts,
2:37and pedestrians so numerous that a man
2:39trying to cross Broadway at noon could
2:41wait 10 minutes for an opening to
2:43appear. The city was locking up. A
2:45laborer who worked in the garment
2:47district on the Lower East Side and
2:48lived in Harlem spent 2 hours each day
2:51on the streets just traveling to and
2:53from his job. Every hour of that commute
2:55was an hour he could not spend working,
2:57sleeping, or being with his family. And
3:00the city was still expanding. 100,000
3:02immigrants passed through Ellis Island
3:04each year, and a large portion of them
3:06remained. New York in 1900 was roughly
3:09doubling in population every 20 years,
3:12and there was no remaining space to
3:14construct on the surface. The subway was
3:16the sole solution. The question was how
3:18to build it. The chief engineer for the
3:20project was William Barkley Parsons,
3:22born in 1859 in New York City, a
3:25Colombia graduate, trained in railroad
3:27surveying. He had spent four years in
3:29China studying the construction of the
3:31Imperial Railways before he was brought
3:33on to design the New York subway. He was
3:3541 years old when the contract was
3:37signed. Systematic, precise, the type of
3:40man who stored his correspondence in
3:42labeled folders and maintained his field
3:44notebooks in a uniform handwriting. His
3:46survey of the proposed route conducted
3:48in 1895 ran to 300 pages. Parsons faced
3:52a problem with no precedent in American
3:54engineering. Most of the proposed line
3:57ran directly beneath the most critical
3:58streets in one of the most heavily built
4:00cities on Earth, Broadway Park Avenue,
4:02the Bowery. Under those streets was not
4:05empty soil. There were gas mans, water
4:07manes, sewer tunnels, telegraph
4:09conduits, and the foundations of
4:11buildings that had been rising since the
4:131840s. Nobody possessed a complete map
4:16of any of it. The gas company had
4:18partial records. The water department
4:20had partial records. The telegraph
4:22company had its own documents stored
4:24independently. No single office held a
4:26unified picture of what existed beneath
4:28the streets. Parsons dispatched survey
4:30teams into every utility access shaft
4:33along the proposed corridor. They
4:35charted what they encountered. They
4:36marked conflicts. They redesigned
4:39segments of the route to bypass
4:40obstacles they could not relocate. And
4:43then they began to dig. The construction
4:45method employed on the majority of the
4:47line was called cut and cover. You open
4:49the street from above, excavate a
4:51rectangular trench to the necessary
4:53depth, construct the tunnel framework
4:55inside the trench, then back fill over
4:57it and restore the pavement. It sounds
4:59simple. In Manhattan in 1900, it was one
5:02of the most complex logistical
5:04undertakings ever attempted in a
5:05civilian environment. Every gas man
5:08lying in the path of the cut had to be
5:09rerouted before the shovels entered the
5:11ground. Every water man, every sewer. On
5:14some blocks, there were eight or 10
5:16separate utility networks at different
5:18depths. Some had been installed decades
5:20apart with no coordination between
5:22agencies. Crews would open a section of
5:25street, begin digging, and strike a cast
5:27iron pipe that appeared on no record
5:29held by any municipal department. They
5:31would halt, send a runner to find the
5:33relevant authority, wait for an engineer
5:35to arrive and identify it, reroute it,
5:37and then resume work. on certain blocks.
5:40This process occurred three or four
5:42times before they reached tunnel depth.
5:44The street remained open throughout this
5:46period, or at least attempted to. Wooden
5:48planks were laid across the trench on
5:50timber supports so that trolley cars and
5:52wagons could continue traveling overhead
5:55while men worked in the excavation
5:57below. The planking flexed under the
5:59weight of traffic. Dirt filtered through
6:01the gaps. The workers below wore it in
6:04their hair and across their faces all
6:05day long. And when a heavily loaded
6:07delivery wagon struck a weakened plank
6:10at the wrong angle, the plank would give
6:12way and the wheel would punch through.
6:14If a man happened to be directly
6:16underneath, the result depended entirely
6:18on where he was positioned. The rock was
6:20the other major difficulty. Manhattan
6:22sits on a base of shist and granite that
6:24is in some places among the hardest
6:27stone on Earth. Below 50th Street, the
6:29bedrock runs close to the surface. In
6:31some locations, only a few feet beneath
6:33the street level. The tunnels had to
6:35pass straight through it. Dynamite was
6:37the only tool available. The blasting
6:39procedure worked as follows. A worker
6:42called the driller operated a compressed
6:44air rock drill, a pneumatic hammer
6:46fitted with a long steel bit against the
6:48rock face. The drill drove the bit in a
6:50rapid succession of blows, rotating it
6:52slightly with each strike, boring a
6:54cylindrical hole. A hole 3 ft deep took
6:57between 20 and 45 minutes, depending on
7:00the hardness of the stone. On a typical
7:02shift, a drilling crew of two men might
7:04produce six to 10 holes in a single rock
7:06face. When the holes were prepared, the
7:08powderman entered. He loaded each hole
7:11with a measured charge of dynamite,
7:12tamped it down with a wooden rod, and
7:14attached the fuse. The crew cleared the
7:16heading. The powderman lit the fuses and
7:19walked out quickly. The charges fired in
7:21sequence. The rock face shattered into
7:23rubble. The smoke and dust settled, or
7:25were supposed to settle before the crew
7:27returned. I want to tell you what that
7:29smoke contained. When dynamite detonates
7:32inside a rock tunnel, it produces a
7:34mixture of gases that includes nitrogen
7:36dioxide, carbon monoxide, and fine
7:38particulate matter. Rock dust ground
7:40into particles small enough to float
7:42indefinitely in still air. The men who
7:44re-entered the heading after a blast
7:46breathed that air. They breathed it
7:48because they had no alternative. The
7:50mechanical ventilation systems in the
7:52tunnels were insufficient for the scale
7:54of the work. Foreman ordered the crews
7:57back in before the air had cleared
7:59because the contract was measured in
8:00cubic yards of rock removed per shift
8:03and every minute spent waiting for
8:04clearance was a minute the yardage was
8:06not advancing. The rock dust accumulated
8:09in their lungs silicosis. The men called
8:11it miners con. They recognized it as a
8:14chest condition that began with a cough
8:16and ended with a man unable to climb a
8:18flight of stairs without pausing to
8:20catch his breath. Most of those who
8:22contracted it were dead within 10 years
8:24of leaving the job. The compensation
8:26available to them was nothing. The legal
8:28framework for occupational illness did
8:30not exist. A man who worked the headings
8:32for 4 years and then spent a decade
8:34dying of his lungs had no legal
8:36recourse. The contractor had paid him
8:38his daily wage. The contractor's
8:40obligation stopped there. I want to tell
8:42you about two of those men because
8:4412,000 is a number and numbers do not
8:46bleed. The first was Thomas Riley, age
8:4928, born in County Galway, Ireland, who
8:52arrived in New York in 1897 on the SS
8:55Umbria. He had been a quarry laborer in
8:57Conact, which meant he already knew the
8:59work. When the subway contracts opened
9:02in 1900, he signed on with the Degnon
9:04Contracting Company, which held the
9:06section from City Hall to 42nd Street.
9:09He was assigned to the drilling crew at
9:11the 33rd Street heading, which ran
9:13directly beneath the intersection of
9:14Broadway and 33rd, one of the busiest
9:17corners in the city. Riley operated the
9:19compressed air drill. His partner held
9:22and turned the bit. They worked in a
9:24heading roughly 8 ft wide and 7 ft high,
9:26lit by two electric bulbs strung on a
9:29temporary line. The noise of the drill
9:30was so loud that conversation was
9:32impossible. The men communicated through
9:35gestures. They wore no hearing
9:36protection. The ringing in their ears by
9:38the end of a shift was severe enough
9:40that several men described it in
9:42compensation claims as a loud continuous
9:44tone that didn't stop even during sleep.
9:47On April 14th, 1902, at approximately 2
9:510 in the afternoon, a charge that had
9:53been set in the 33rd Street heading
9:55failed to detonate on the first attempt.
9:57The powderman, following standard
9:59procedure, called for a wait. The wait
10:01was supposed to be 20 minutes. The
10:03foreman, under pressure from the shift
10:05superintendent to achieve yardage before
10:07the shift ended, called the crew back in
10:10at 12 minutes. Thomas Riley was the
10:12first man back into the heading. The
10:14charge detonated while he was 4 ft from
10:17the drill hole. He was killed instantly.
10:19The coroner's report noted multiple
10:21traumatic injuries consistent with
10:23proximity to a high explosive blast. He
10:25was identified by his work tag. A small
10:28brass disc stamped with his employee
10:30number hung around his neck on a piece
10:31of wire. The contractor sent a
10:33representative to the boarding house on
10:35West 30th Street, where Riley had rented
10:37a room. The representative paid the
10:39landlady $18, which was the remaining
10:42balance of Riley's wages for the week.
10:44There was no next of kin listed in his
10:46employment record. He had written his
10:48mother's address in Gway into a notebook
10:50that was found in his bunk, but no
10:52letter was ever sent. I found his name
10:55in the Degnon Company payroll records
10:57cross-referenced against a coroner's
10:59register from New York County archived
11:01in a storage facility in the Bronx. The
11:03payroll entry after his name reads
11:04simply final. The second man was Antonio
11:07Ferrara, aged 33, born in Palmo, Sicily,
11:10who came to New York in 1898 and worked
11:13in the garment district for two years
11:15before he was recruited for subway
11:17construction by a padron, a labor
11:19contractor who operated in the Italian
11:21immigrant neighborhood and supplied men
11:24to the large construction projects for a
11:26fee taken from both the workers' wages
11:28and the contractor's payment. The Pedron
11:30arrangement was lawful. It was also
11:32predatory in ways that everyone involved
11:33fully recognized. Ferrara gave the
11:35padron 2 weekly from his earnings of 175
11:38per day in return for the position. The
11:40cot in the construction camp shack near
11:41the excavation on Park Avenue and the
11:43assurance of consistent work. He was
11:45operating at a net loss for his first
11:47three days on the job. He was placed
11:49with the mucking crew. The muckers were
11:50the ones who entered after the explosion
11:52once the smoke had supposedly dissipated
11:54and scooped the fragmented stone into
11:56the orc carts that moved along a narrow
11:58gauge track laid on the tunnel floor.
12:00The muck consisted of blasted granite
12:01and skis blended with ground water that
12:03perpetually seeped through the rock
12:05face. It was dense, soaked, jagged, and
12:07would shred work gloves within a few
12:09hours. Muckers endured 10-hour shifts,
12:11shoveling at a rate dictated by the
12:12daily output requirement. A dozen men in
12:14a gang were expected to move a
12:15designated volume each shift, and
12:17Antonio Ferrara layboard with the
12:18mucking gang from May 1901 until March
12:201902. In March of 1902, he started
12:22coughing. He continued working. By
12:24August of 1902, the cough had become so
12:26persistent that the contractor's
12:27physician examined him and recorded
12:29preliminary indications of lung disease.
12:31He was not removed from the drilling
12:32crew. Instead, he was shifted from
12:34mucking to above ground duties, loading
12:36filled or cars onto the hoist at street
12:38level. He passed away on September 3rd,
12:401903 at New York Hospital on West 16th
12:42Street. He was 34 years old. His wife,
12:45Maria, had traveled from Palmo in 1901.
12:47She was 29. They had one child, a
12:49daughter born in New York in 1902. The
12:50death certificate lists chronic
12:52pulmonary disease as the cause of death.
12:54Maria Ferrara took insuing peacework
12:55from a contractor on Malbury Street and
12:57raised her daughter alone in a two room
12:59apartment on Elizabeth Street. The
13:00daughter wed in 1921. She lived to be
13:0282. No one inscribed Antonio Ferrara's
13:05name on the completed subway. And here
13:07is where the narrative must pivot
13:08because you cannot present this solely
13:10as a tale of sacrifice. The men who
13:12preceded him and the ones who persevered
13:14afterward constructed something that
13:15reshaped the contours of American urban
13:17existence in ways that persist to this
13:19day. Pause for a moment before I escort
13:21you below ground. I recognize I ask
13:23every time, but this channel is the sole
13:25venue where these names are spoken aloud
13:26and the algorithm suppresses the work
13:28unless you signal that you desire more.
13:30One click, then return. Here is what
13:32Parsons and his engineering team
13:33confronted at the northern terminus of
13:35the line. Above 96th Street on the east
13:37side, the bedrock descends sharply and
13:39the landscape shifts. The cut and cover
13:41technique became unworkable. The tunnel
13:43had to go deeper, which demanded a
13:45wholly different strategy. deep bore
13:46tunneling through solid rock with no
13:48surface access and no workspace except
13:50what the men carved for themselves. The
13:52approach was called top heading and
13:54bench. The crew would push a smaller
13:56opening, the heading, through the rock
13:57at the top of the intended tunnel
13:59profile, then blast downward and outward
14:00to full dimensions in a secondary
14:02operation. It doubled the time required
14:04to finish each segment, but it was the
14:06sole method for preserving structural
14:07integrity and unstable ground without
14:09surface reinforcement. The problem was
14:11water. Manhattan's bedrock is riddled
14:13with fractures. And in those fractured
14:15zones, pressurized groundwater exploits
14:17every crack. At multiple points along
14:19the deep bore sections, water bursts
14:20through the heading face and flows
14:22forceful enough to knock a man off his
14:23feet. Work halted. Pumps were brought
14:25in. The water was evacuated while men
14:27labored behind temporary barriers of
14:29timber and oakum. Excavating against the
14:31current, the pump crews operated in
14:32rotations to prevent the heading from
14:34flooding again. At one stretch near 86th
14:36Street, the water pressure grew so
14:38intense that the contractor brought in
14:40pneumatic Kessan workers, men
14:42experienced in compressed air
14:43environments from the bridge quesin
14:44projects of earlier decades. The heading
14:46was pressurized to counteract the
14:48groundwater pressure and the workers
14:50entered through an airlock. The wages
14:52were higher. The risk was
14:53correspondingly greater. Quase and
14:54disease, decompression, sickness
14:56disabled and killed men who emerged from
14:58pressurized environments too rapidly.
15:00The underlying mechanism was not fully
15:01comprehended in 1900. The remedy was not
15:03entirely developed. A man doubled over
15:05with the excruciating joint agony that
15:07workers called the Benz went to the
15:08construction physician who had limited
15:10treatments at his disposal. Some
15:12recovered, some never walked again. Now,
15:14let me describe what they devised in the
15:16process of carrying out the work. The
15:18underpinning of pre-existing foundations
15:20ranked among the great improvised
15:22engineering accomplishments of the
15:23entire enterprise. When the tunnel route
15:25passed directly beneath a structure, the
15:27building's foundation footings rested in
15:29the soil or rock immediately above the
15:31planned bore. Removing that rock would
15:32eliminate the footing support. The
15:34building above would settle, crack, or
15:36in the worst scenario, collapse. The
15:38answer was underpinning. Before the
15:40tunnel cut reached the building's
15:41footing, a crew would dig in from the
15:43side and maneuver a timber or concrete
15:44support into position beneath the
15:46existing foundation, transferring the
15:48building's load to a new temporary
15:49bearing before the old one was removed.
15:51On a single city block, a crew might
15:53underpin 20 separate footings, each
15:55demanding its own strategy, its own
15:57temporary shoring, and its own
15:59assessment of how much weight was
16:00pressing on that particular point. The
16:02men performing this work were not
16:03following a standardized handbook. No
16:05such handbook existed. Parson's
16:07engineering staff developed the
16:08procedures as they progressed, amended
16:10them when they proved ineffective, and
16:12revised them again, a footing that
16:14fractured during underpinning meant a
16:15halt and evaluation, a redesign, and in
16:17some cases the complete rerouting of the
16:19boar to avoid the problematic structure
16:21altogether. The project did not destroy
16:23a single major building along the road.
16:25That was not coincidental. That was
16:2712,000 men exercising meticulous
16:29precision in conditions that permitted
16:30no margin for error. The ventilation
16:32issue was never fully resolved during
16:34construction. What they had was a
16:35network of temporary shafts bored to the
16:37surface at intervals equipped with fans
16:39that circulated air through the active
16:41sections. In the deep bore areas, the
16:43shafts were widely spaced. The air at
16:44the face of a heading 400 ft from the
16:46nearest shaft was whatever the men made
16:48of it. It was sweltering. It was
16:50saturated with dust, powder gases, and
16:52the respiration of two dozen men working
16:54in a space the size of a large sitting
16:56room. Thermometers at some headings
16:57registered temperatures exceeding a
16:59100°ree FF in summer. Men worked 2-hour
17:01shifts and surfaced for air, then
17:03descended again. The output quota did
17:05not adjust with the temperature. I want
17:06you to stand at the bottom of the 86th
17:08Street station today on the platform of
17:09the four five and six trains and grasp
17:12what you are viewing. The walls are
17:13tiled, the benches are metal, the
17:15lighting is fluorescent. Behind all of
17:16that lies granite that was hand cut in
17:181902, blasted with dynamite by men who
17:20never knew that a man named Antonio
17:22Ferrara worked 20 ft from where you are
17:24standing. The curvature of the tunnel
17:25wall is precisely the curve that William
17:27Parson and surveyor sketched on paper in
17:291895. The rock has not shifted. The
17:31subway inaugurated service on October
17:3227th, 1904. The initial line ran from
17:35City Hall in low Manhattan to 145th
17:37Street in Harlem, 4 years and 7 months
17:39after the first Spade entered the ground
17:40at City Hall Park. John McDonald's team
17:42had completed the tunnel on schedule and
17:44within financial constraints. The fair
17:45was 5 cents. On opening day, 150,000
17:48people rode the subway. By the end of
17:50the first week, daily ridership reached
17:51350,000. Within a year, it was half a
17:54million. The city that had been clogged
17:55at street level discovered that it had
17:57breathing room underground. The impact
17:58on New York was immediate and
18:00irreversible. The neighborhoods above
18:02the Harlem portions of the line, which
18:03in 1900 were sparssely inhabited
18:06farmland and rocky terrain, began to
18:08fill within months of the subways
18:09opening. Developers purchased land along
18:11the proposed route before construction
18:13ended and erected apartment buildings to
18:15accommodate the workers who could now
18:16reside in Harlem and commute to Midtown.
18:18The population of upper Manhattan
18:19doubled in the decade following 1904.
18:22The Bronx, which the subway reached by
18:241905, grew by 150,000 people in 5 years.
18:27The 5-cent fair was accessible to
18:28everyone. A garment worker on the lower
18:30east side could live in the Bronx and
18:32commute to work for a dime per day round
18:33trip. That dime opened the entire burrow
18:35to settlement. The ethnic geography of
18:37New York was transformed by the fair
18:39structure of a tunnel blasted through
18:40rock by men who could never have
18:42afforded to live in the neighborhoods
18:43they created. John Macdonald did not
18:45amass wealth from the project. The
18:47contract terms favored Belmont's
18:49Interbor Rapid Transit Company.
18:51McDonald's profits when he died in 191
18:52with his finances in disarray 3 years
18:54before the subway was extended into
18:56Brooklyn. August Belmont operated the
18:58IRT until 1940 when the city purchased
19:00his stake for 326 million 50 years
19:03almost to the month from the night the
19:04alderman voted to permit him to build
19:06it. William Parsons went on to design
19:07subway systems in other cities. He was
19:09appointed to the Panama Canal
19:10Commission. He taught engineering at
19:12Colombia. He died in 1932 at age 73
19:15laden with accolades. His name appears
19:17on a street in the Bronx. The DNA
19:18company and the other contractors who
19:20constructed the tunnels are now defunct.
19:22Most of their construction records have
19:24vanished with them. What survives is
19:25fragmentaryary payroll ledgers, corona
19:27reports, a handful of contractors
19:29personal diaries, the rapid transit
19:31commission's official minutes which
19:33document engineering decisions in
19:34meticulous detail and record worker
19:36fatalities in passing references. One
19:38man killed heading at 33rd Street, April
19:4014th. That is the complete entry. No
19:42name. The name I discovered in a
19:44separate document. If you have remained
19:45with me this long, I ask you to do one
19:47more thing for me. Subscribe not for me.
19:49For Thomas Riley, who enlisted with
19:50nothing but a work tag on a wire and did
19:52not survive. For Antonio Ferrara, whose
19:54lungs failed 2 years after he left the
19:57excavation. For the men whose names
19:58appear in the payroll books, but not in
20:00the histories. This channel is the only
20:02place where they are named aloud. Tell
20:03the algorithm you want more of this. One
20:05click. Here is the final segment, the
20:07one I keep returning to. The original
20:09City Hall station is still down there.
20:10It was closed in 1945 because the
20:12platform curves were too tight for the
20:14longer cars that the system required by
20:16then. Rather than reconstruct it, the
20:18simply shut it down and sealed it. The
20:20tiles remain, the skylights, the
20:21guestino tile vaulting, the original
20:23iron work, all preserved by nothing
20:25except being locked in an underground
20:27chamber for 80 years. The New York
20:29Transit Museum conducts occasional
20:30tours. If you have the opportunity, take
20:32one. You stand in a room that has not
20:34altered since 1904. And what you are
20:36standing in is the original architecture
20:37of a tunnel board by hand through
20:39Manhattan skised by men who were paid a
20:41$1.70 five a day to go underground and
20:43reshape a city from below. There is no
20:45plaque down there for Thomas Riley. No
20:47plaque for Antonio Ferrara. There is the
20:49tile they excavated through still
20:51holding the curve of the arch that their
20:52blasting made possible. Still exactly as
20:54William Parsons drew it in 1895. The
20:57rock they cut still endures. They built
20:58the thing that built modern New York
21:00City. They built it with compressed air
21:01drills and dynamite and hand shovels in
21:03the darkness in dust that killed them
21:05slowly for wages that expired before the
21:07month did. And the city still runs on
21:08it. That was the New York City subway
21:101900 to 1904 drilled through granite and
21:13skised by men whose names are in the
21:14payroll books. If you know which
21:16basement to search, I am grateful you
21:18stayed. Tell me in the comments if any
21:19of your own kin worked the cuts, the
21:21headings, or the casins. I read every
21:23comment. I will see you in the next

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of How The Men Who Built The New York City SubWay Drilled Through Manhattan Bedrock Without Maps by Erased Labour, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 4,208 words across 651 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.