From the NYPL photo album of the construction of the IRT subway 1900-1904, here are four pictures titled “59th Street Circle.” That circle is the southwestern corner of Central Park, with Central Park South/59th Street passing through east-west, Eighth Avenue/Central Park West passing through North-South, and Broadway, on two very different alignments, passing though on a diagonal roughly southeast-northwest. The subway, of course, followed Broadway, the street that kinks in the middle of the circle, so the tunnel takes a route parallel to nothing. Note that the circle’s central monument to Columbus was installed in 1892, but the name “Columbus Circle” took a while to catch on.
In chronological order, starting on December 3, 1900:
We’re looking north from Broadway on the south side of the circle. That’s the Columbus monument center background, behind the streetcar. Even in 1900, the utility tangle below a Manhattan street was impressive. We’ve got hand excavation in and around the pipes.
January 26, 1901:
They’ve excavated right up to the west side of the Columbus monument, with a single steel beam as shoring under the west edge of the stone. It looks like the monument has a rubble foundation…with an old arched-brick sewer running underneath it, with a modern iron pipe inside of that. I particularly like the guy wires to hold the tall, slender monument vertical, at least one of which tied off to a piece of a tree trunk.
March 18, 1901, possibly the same location as December 1900 but looking northeast, possibly somewhere else:
They’re about eighteen or twenty feet down from grade, which might be near the bottom of the excavation. Nice wooden derrick up top.
Same date:
Some very impressive hand-built wooden trusses that appear to be there entirely to hold up the utilities while the trench is dug below them. Note that the blur on the left is a streetcar traveling quite close to the excavation.
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