A Century Under the City: How New York City’s Subway Built a Metropolis – and a Legacy

It began as a simple ceremonial ride, with factory whistles blaring and thousands of New Yorkers cheering as Mayor George McClellan piloted the train out of City Hall Station at 2:34 p.m. on Oct. 27, 1904. But things turned tense for those first riders when McClellan, caught up in the historic moment, refused to surrender the controls, boldly declaring “I’m running this train.”

Thankfully, after a few unwelcome thrills and lurches, the mayor wisely ceded control to the motorman who safely piloted the train and its passengers into 145th Street Station nine miles away.

It’s an impressive milestone, not just for the city’s illustrious history, but also to the early origins of our engineering and professional services firm, which remain deeply rooted in those New York subway tunnels to this day.

William Barclay Parsons, the founder of New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff – a forerunner of our firm – was a passenger on that first underground journey, having served as chief engineer for the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) project, the company responsible for construction of the subway. The landmark project had a profound impact on the firm’s future, just as it has impacted the millions of people who rely on the system every day.

As chief engineer, Parsons served as the mastermind for New York City’s first subway line.

Originating from City Hall and extending into Harlem, the first IRT line featured 15 miles of tunnel, six miles of viaduct and featured many industry firsts for efficiency, health and safety.

These industry firsts included:

• complex tunneling under existing buildings, including City Hall;
• all-steel cars for durability and crashworthiness;
• third-rail electrification to eliminate the smoke from the locomotive;
• express tracks, which allowed for faster travel with fewer stops;
• an interlocking block system with automatic trippers and overlapping track circuits to keep trains a safe distance apart; and
• a train stop button that would automatically halt the train if the motorman's hand was removed from the control panel.

The project’s groundbreaking took place during a ceremony at City Hall Park on March 24, 1900. Two years later, in July of 1902, the Board of Rapid Transit Railroad Commissioners awarded a second contract for a 3.1-mile extension of the subway from City Hall in Manhattan, under the East River, to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. While Oct. 27, 1904, marked the opening of the initial operating segment of the subway line, the remainder opened in May of 1908.

Every achievement along the way was met with widespread celebration from the public, and media reports of the day were glowing. The New York Times called the subway “the greatest achievement of the time in municipal engineering.” According to The Sun, New York now had “the finest, handsomest, most complete and best equipped underground railway in the world.”

“We carry on this legacy to this day, as WSP is still the most prolific firm for planning, designing, project management and construction management of the New York City Subway,” said John Gasparine, AICP, LEED AP, senior vice president and New York Transportation lead at WSP.

In 2016, more than a century after the New York City Subway’s first underground line, the system reached an average of 5.66 million daily passengers. This achievement made it the busiest rapid transit system in the nation and the busiest in the western hemisphere.

Former Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) employees like Frank Jezycki witnessed this growth firsthand. Based in Newark, Jezycki spent 36 years with the MTA and worked for the department of subways in various leadership positions, as well as executive vice president and chief operating officer of MTA-New York City Transit. He is now senior vice president of Transit and Rail engineering at WSP.

Jezycki praised the system designers and engineers, who had the foresight to plan and build a system that was “future proof.”

“Much of the subway system was built with the ‘if you build it, they will come’ idea,” Jezycki said. “That’s evident in the original system, how the city planners and designers selected where the terminal stations were going to be, and the hub, local and express stations, and the development that came along with that layout.”

Jezycki witnessed the subway’s influence in 2015, with completion of the 1.5-mile extension of New York’s No. 7 Line Subway from Times Square to a new station in Hudson Yards.

“Before that No. 7 train station opened up, that area of Hudson Yards was just underutilized industrial and commercial space all around,” Jezycki said. “But then you open that new station, and now Hudson Yards is like a city within a city. It’s amazing how it transformed that neighborhood, and the same holds true for the original subway system.”

The No. 7 station in Hudson Yards was the product of more than a decade’s worth of collaboration between our firm and the MTA. The MTA managed the $2.4 billion extension project, and we provided conceptual, preliminary and final design, among other services.

We also served as consultant construction manager for the MTA’s $4.4 billion Second Avenue line, which opened in 2017. It was on this project that the MTA, the contractor and our firm worked together to overcome the project’s tunnel boring challenges and complete the necessary excavations.

Cooperation was crucial in the joint venture behind the Long Island Rail Road East Side Access project. As part of the General Engineering Consultant with STV, Inc. and Parsons Corp, we delivered final design and construction phase services, and was able to help provide a more convenient connection between Long Island communities and Grand Central Station in Manhattan when service began in 2023.

“These transformative projects were made possible with the initiative and support of the New York transportation agencies that have partnered with us over the decades, as well as the many small businesses, consultants, contractors and vendors,” said Jerry Jannetti, senior vice president and Transportation and Infrastructure executive at WSP. “It’s through these prolific partnerships that our professionals will continue to help plan, design and manage this storied subway system.”

Looking back on the 120 years of progress for the New York City Subway, the advancements in technology are staggering, such as the shift from fire-lit lanterns to electric LED lights or the emergence of more advanced and efficient control systems.

Looking forward is equally impressive, with more emerging technologies and new alternative fuel sources for subway trains.

The future is bright for New York’s landmark subway system, and that’s thanks to the incredible foundation that was laid more than a century ago.

“WSP is privileged to serve MTA and its millions of riders. We value the legacy of those that came before us, and the history we’re making today,” Gasparine said.