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The Manhattan Railway Company was an
elevated railway An elevated railway or elevated train (also known as an el train for short) is a rapid transit railway with the tracks above street level on a viaduct or other elevated structure (usually constructed from steel, cast iron, concrete, or bricks ...
company in
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
and
the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
,
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. It operated four lines: the Second Avenue Line, Third Avenue Line, Sixth Avenue Line, and Ninth Avenue Line.


History


19th century

By the late 1870s, the elevated railways in Manhattan were operated by two companies, the Metropolitan Elevated Railway (Sixth Avenue) and
New York Elevated Railroad New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
(Third and Ninth Avenues). The Metropolitan also began constructing a line above Second Avenue. The Manhattan Railway Company was chartered on December 29, 1875, and leased both companies on May 20, 1879. The company was the subject of investigation by the
New York State Legislature The New York State Legislature consists of the two houses that act as the state legislature of the U.S. state of New York: The New York State Senate and the New York State Assembly. The Constitution of New York does not designate an official ...
's Hepburn Committee which exposed a scheme that involved barely legal business practices and massive watering of the company's stock in order to raise its nominal value from $2 million to $15 million. The exposure of the shady business practices of the company led the Hepburn Committee to propose an act of the legislature outlawing fictitious "ownership" of railroads via leases and related stock watering schemes. From 1881 the Third Avenue Line and the Sixth Avenue Line were in service 24/7. The Suburban Rapid Transit Company, operating the Third Avenue Line in the Bronx, was leased on June 4, 1891; all three companies were eventually merged into the Manhattan Railway Company in February 1890.McGraw Electric Railway Manual: The Red Book of American Street Railways Investments
1902, p. 186
Richard Croker Richard Welstead Croker (November 24, 1843 – April 29, 1922), known as "Boss Croker," was an Irish American political boss who was a leader of New York City's Tammany Hall. His control over the city was cemented with the 1897 election of ...
, boss of
Tammany Hall Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main loc ...
, was in the newspapers in 1899 after a disagreement with Jay Gould's son, George Gould, president of the Manhattan Railway Company, when Gould refused Croker's attempt to attach compressed-air pipes to the Elevated company's structures. Croker owned many shares of the New York Auto-Truck Company, a company which would have benefited from the arrangement. In response to the refusal, Croker used Tammany influence to create new city laws requiring drip pans under structures in Manhattan at every street crossing and the requirement that the railroad run trains every five minutes with a $100 violation for every instance.


20th century

The
Interborough Rapid Transit Company The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) was the private operator of New York City's original underground subway line that opened in 1904, as well as earlier elevated railways and additional rapid transit lines in New York City. The IRT w ...
, incorporated in April 1902 as the operating company for its first subway line, signed a 999-year lease on the Manhattan Railway Company lines on April 1, 1903, over a year before the subway opened. Finally, after 60 or more years of service, and after having operated under a series of companies and jurisdictions, mainly the IRT, the elevated lines began to disappear, with the first line closing in 1938, and the final section closing in 1973: * service on the Sixth Avenue Line ended in 1938. * the Ninth Avenue Line south of 155th Street was closed in 1940, while the section from 155th Street north into the Bronx was continued as the "Polo Grounds Shuttle" until 1958. * the final section of the Second Avenue Line closed in 1942. * service on the Manhattan section of the Third Avenue Line was phased out in the early 1950s and ended in 1955, while the service on the Bronx section terminated in 1973. Substation 7, built by the company around 1898 to convert alternating current to direct current, survives at 1782 Third Avenue, at 99th Street and is on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
. The contemporaneous 74th Street Powerhouse at York Avenue supplies electricity for
Consolidated Edison Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 b ...
.74th Street Power Station
Museum of the City of New York


See also

*
The Hepburn Committee The Hepburn Committee was created in 1879 by an act of the New York State Legislature. A. Barton Hepburn was directed by the State Legislature to investigate the railroads' practice of giving freight rate rebates (as much as 25%) to certain of the ...
*
George Jay Gould George Jay Gould I (February 6, 1864 – May 16, 1923) was a financier and the son of Jay Gould. He was himself a railroad executive, leading the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (DRGW), Western Pacific Railroad (WP), and the Manhatta ...
* Frank K. Hain, longtime general manager


References


External links


Manhattan Railway Company photography collection at the Museum of the City of New York
{{DEFAULTSORT:Manhattan Railway Company Passenger rail transport in New York City Defunct New York (state) railroads Defunct public transport operators in the United States Predecessors and affiliates of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company