New York Underground

New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City
Julia Solis
Routledge, November 2004 (2007 in paperback)



Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 11-1/2 inches | 252 pages | 210 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0415950138 | $47.95

Publisher Description:

Did alligators ever really live in New York's sewers? What's it like to explore the old aqueducts beneath the city? How many levels are beneath Grand Central Station? And how exactly did the pneumatic tube system that New York's post offices used to employ work?

In this richly illustrated historical tour of New York's vast underground systems, Julia Solis answers all these questions and much, much more. New York Underground takes readers through ingenious criminal escape routes, abandoned subway stations, and dark crypts beneath lower Manhattan to expose the city's basic anatomy. While the city is justly famous for what lies above ground, its underground passages are equally legendary and tell us just as much about how the city works.

dDAB Commentary:

Julia Solis's now 15-year-old book (17, if we take its 2002 first edition in German into account) reminds me of two other books, both published since 2004. First is Kate Ascher's The Works from 2005, which shares the exact same subtitle as New York Underground; in it Ascher explains "The Anatomy of the City" (NYC in particular, but cities in general) through diagrams and other specially made illustrations. Second is Moses Gates' Hidden Cities: A Memoir of Urban Exploration from 2013, in which the reader is treated to the adventures of the author and his band of fellow urban explorers through the bowels of NYC as well as its rooftops and other off-limits places. Solis's book shares the qualities of both of these books. It is both a history/documentation of the various pieces of underground infrastructures that make NYC and parts of it run, and a first-hand account of the author's exploration of those pieces: subway tunnels, water tunnels, steam tunnels, and other types of tunnels.

I was prompted to take this wayback weekend look at New York Underground after reviewing Stanley Greenberg's latest photo book, Codex New York. Although Greenberg's carefully crafted color photos are far superior to Solis and friends' dark snapshots of dark tunnels (the best are assembled in four groups of color plates, where an orange glow like the cover prevails), and Greenberg's explorations are relatively timid compared to Solis's voyages through doors marked "Danger" and "No Admittance," the two books are kin in that they reveal two of the many ways NYC can be explored, and how the city offers so much for people willing to peel away at its layers. With a paperback version released in 2007 and a couple-dozen 4- and 5-star reviews on Amazon, New York Underground is a fairly successful book, and I think this stems from the balancing act of stodgy, in-the-stacks history and risk-taking memoir. Therefore the book appeals to a variety of people: those with an interest in how cities work; the urban explorers who need a guide to New York City's subterranean passages; and armchair spelunkers like me, who wouldn't go through those doors marked "Danger."

Spreads:


Author Bio:

Julia Solis is a writer and photographer who lives in New York City. She is the founder of two arts organizations: Dark Passage and Ars Subterranea, both of which are dedicated to exploring and exposing New York's underground passages.

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