Local author and illustrator Joe McKendry will deliver an interactive presentation about his book, Beneath the Streets of Boston: Building America’s First Subway, at Brookline High School on February 23 at 7PM.
In the 1880s, the transportation system in Boston was a maze of narrow, winding streets, laid out, in some cases, along Colonial cow paths. Tremont Street was subject to gridlock from a convergence of foot traffic, horse drawn conveyances, trolley lines, and electric streetcars. The system was completely inadequate to meet the needs of a modern, bustling metropolis. Inviting listeners to explore the uncharted territory below Boston’s 19th century streets, Joe McKendry will discuss his book, which chronicles the building of America’s first subway in Boston starting in 1895.
The story will come to life through McKendry’s own stunning illustrations, and a historically-accurate narrative about Boston’s first “Big Dig.” Looking back at archival photographs, newspaper clippings, and construction blueprints, McKendry will discuss the perils of building the subway in an urban environment. Hear about the subterranean realm of workers who often dug miles of tunnels by hand. Using picks and shovels to excavate new routes, the workers burrowed deep below Boston Harbor, and under Beacon Hill and the Old State House, in order to build the Longfellow Bridge that would carry the trains over the Charles River into Cambridge.
Hear first-hand accounts of the public’s misconceptions about underground transportation, including their fears, fantastically expressed through the gruesome fiction of a fanged and tentacled “subway microbe.” Boston’s subway opened on September 1, 1897—100 people were on the inaugural ride, and over 100,000 would ride the train on that first day at a cost of only a nickel.
McKendry is a painter and illustrator whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide, including the New York Times, Times of London, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Time. His books, Beneath the Streets of Boston: Building America’s First Subway and One Times Square: A Century of Change at the Crossroads of the World, chronicle the history of their subjects in a way that is accessible to both children and adults. A native of Maynard, MA, McKendry teaches painting and illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in Brookline, MA with his wife and three kids.
Copies of Beneath the Streets of Boston: Building America’s First Subway will be available for sale and signing at the event. For more information about this event, contact 617-730-2700.
Photos credit: bostonstreetcars.com