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Description:
Beautifully engraved certificate from the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company issued in 1913. This historic document was printed by the Republic Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of a subway train traveling through a tunnel with city scenes on its sides. This item is hand signed by the Company's Agent and is over 90 years old. This is a very hard certificate to find issued.
Certificate Vignette The idea of building a tunnel under the Hudson River was conceived in the 1860s as lower Manhattan became heavily congested. The belief was that with a tunnel under the Hudson, the railroad lines terminating on the west shore of the river could run their trains directly into the city, making it possible for people to live comfortably in suburban New Jersey and commute into the City. The first person to actually begin building the tunnel was DeWitt Haskins, who organized the Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company. With $10,000,000 of capital stock issued, he began to build a tunnel between 15th Street and the New Jersey shore. However, in 1874 the Lackawanna Railroad obtained an injunction to halt work because of the competition which the new line would give to the railroad's ferries. In 1879 work resumed but was soon halted again after a blowout occurred, taking 20 lives. In 1889 work was begun again by the English firm of S. S. Pearson and Son, but financial woes plagued the supervising Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company, then headed by John R. Dos Passos, and in 1892 work was suspended again. In 1889, an ambitious young lawyer, William G. McAdoo, independently thought of a plan to build a tunnel under the Hudson. Mr. McAdoo thought that running electric trains in tubes under the river would be the most feasible answer to problems faced by late 19th century commuters plagued by slow ferries running on long headways. He had previously had experience with railroad electrification. While practicing law in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he became trustee of the Knoxville Street Railroad. Because of his persuasive powers, money was borrowed to electrify the Knoxville horsecar lines in 1890. To personally supervise the undertaking, Mr. McAdoo commuted almost daily between the two cities-a distance of 120 miles. William Gibbs McAdoo Mr. McAdoo moved to New York in 1892. He became a business associate of John Dos Passos, a leading corporation lawyer and president of the defunct Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company. Obsessed with the tunnel idea, McAdoo mentioned his proposal to Dos Passos, who informed him of the abandoned half-mile segment of tube lying under the river. Through Dos Passos McAdoo was introduced to Charles Jacobs, who was the engineer in charge of the abandoned work. Jacobs, and his firm partner, J. Vipond Davies, estimated that completion of the tunnel would cost four million dollars. Upon inspection of the pumped-out tunnel, McAdoo and the engineers found that the basic structure and equipment were usable. By the selling of bonds by the Hudson Companies, money was provided to continue the construction of the tunnel. At this time, McAdoo was president of the New York and New Jersey Railroad Company-one of several companies interested in securing a franchise on the portion of the proposed line to be built in Manhattan from the New York Rapid Transit Board. Later, the company and others with the same interest combined, forming the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company, and Mr. McAdoo became president of what for many years was to be known as the "H&M". The Hudson Companies began work in 1902 under the river, with the agreement that the firm would turn the tunnels over to Mr. McAdoo to operate upon completion. The tunnel was built by pushing a shield through the silt at the bottom of the river. As the mechanical shield was pushed through the mud, every thirty inches the door was opened and the displaced mud placed into the chamber, where it was shoveled into small cars which hauled it to the surface. In places the silt was baked with huge kerosene torches to harden it so it would be removed more easily. When the company began the second uptown tube, enormous hydraulic jacks pushed a shield through the mud at the rate of seventy-two feet a day. Mr. McAdoo states in his autobiography, Crowded Years, that this was the first time in history that a tunnel was bored without laborers having to excavate and remove the displaced earth. All of the work was done under an air pressure of thirty-eight pounds per square inch. However, the tunnel engineers ran into difficulty when a reef was encountered on the Manhattan side of the river. Chief Engineer Jacobs devised a method of dynamiting through the reef and removing the rock through the doors of the bulkhead. Clay was dumped onto the reef from barges to lessen the chance of a tunnel blowout occurring. Several blowouts did occur, nevertheless, and the worst one took one man's life. In this accident three canvas yacht sails were fastened together to plug the leak, However, when the interior of the bulkhead was reopened, the sails, as well as the clay weighing them down, were sucked into the tunnel. Mr. McAdoo intended that the uptown line be modern and efficient in every respect. The terminals at Hoboken and 33rd Street were built so that passengers arriving aboard the trains would be discharged onto one platform, and on the other side would be the loading platform. The stations were characterized by vaulted arches, round classical pillars, and wide passageways leading to the surface. He observed the mistakes in the construction and operation of New York City's Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) subway, and eliminated the possibility of these flaws in his line. He particularly desired to eliminate the conflict between people boarding the cars and those leaving; hence the separate platforms. No stations were located on curves. Each subway platform
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