Buried

When I was new in this business, I asked a question about street utilities and first heard the name “Empire City Subway” spoken, in a low voice somewhere between awe and not wanting to summon a demon. I was told those guys know everything that’s underground and only they know. ECS is a company, now owned by Verizon, that these days owns and operates a large network of underground conduit used for various telecommunications cable. To quote that link, “ECS owns approximately 11,000 manholes¹ and 58 million feet of conduit. The conduits are made of iron pipe, vitrified clay, creosoted wood², plastic, fiberglass or concrete.” The different materials are explained largely by the age of the network: while new conduit is installed under the streets from time to time, the company dates back to 1891. It is not at all surprising that they would have extensive maps of the underside of streets where their conduits are located.

That origin date is no surprise. The Blizzard of 1888 had, just a little earlier, badly damaged the aboveground telephone and telegraph wires of a surprisingly large number of different competing companies, so the years immediately following the blizzard were a good time to get into the underground-conduit business, using, I guess, creosoted wood pipe. Here’s an undated, but post-1878³, pre-1898⁴, and probably pre-1888⁵ postcard of Grand Central, with some big poles on 42nd Street:

Why bring this up now? After all this time, the city government has decided to create its own map. Because of security concerns, relatively few people will ever see it, but in theory that map could help speed infrastructure projects in the parts of the city where the streets cover intense tangles of utilities…AKA nearly all of Manhattan, most of Brooklyn, and substantial chunks of the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.

1. ! ↩︎
2. !! ↩︎
3. Because we see the Grand Central branch of the Third Avenue elevated in the distance. ↩︎
4. Because Grand Central Depot had not yet been renovated (among other things, having the headhouse go from three to six stories) into Grand Central Station. ↩︎
5. Because the big multi-armed poles are there. ↩︎