1927 / 1930 T. Kennard Thomson Proposal to Save New York by Replacing Subways

These are the original 1927-1931 manuscript illustrations for T. Kennard Thomson's No More Subways initiative, intended to solve New York City's out-of-control traffic congestion. In line with the car-centric ideologies of Robert Moses (1888 - 1981), Thomson's plan called for the replacement of subways with segregated tiered roads, railroad tracks, and highways along New York's major avenues.

No More Subways

In the early 20th century, Manhattan faced many of the same challenges as today - limited space, soaring real estate values, overpopulation, and gridlock traffic congestion. Kennard Thomson believed that engineering would come to the rescue. His solutions, including tiered avenues (here) and massive landfills (NewManhattan-kennardthomson-1930), were novel and futuristic but in no way the crackpot fantasies of a maverick visionary. Kennard Thomson was a highly respected engineer, having pioneered innovations in pneumatic caissons, worked on countless major urban infrastructure projects, and spoke regularly at the American Society of Civil Engineers.

His solutions for New York's traffic problems, Real Rapid Transit, was published in the Port of New York, Harbor and Marine Review (Vol. 6, January 1927),

MANHATTAN'S traffic facilities have failed completely to meet its traffic needs. At vast expense new subways are being built and planned whose completion will find traffic jams practically unchanged from present intolerable conditions.

Subways fail utterly to meet our growing passenger traffic needs and will continue to fail. For Manhattan already they are archaic. Yet their cost is a fearful and growing drain upon New York's resources impoverishing the whole Greater City without remedying appreciably our acute need of adequate passenger transportation facilities.

A revolution in surface facilities also is needed to provide adequately for the ever-growing pedestrian and vehicular traffic, now so dense as constantly to menace and too frequently destroy human life, while threatening a vehicular deadlock on the long stretches of our busiest avenues.

'As for the Subways,' Dr. Thomson wrote, 'they should never have been built. They cost so much and take so long to build - that no matter how many we build we shall never have enough.'

A Closer Look

The proposal consists of three mansucript schematics. Two dating to 1927, and a third from 1931. The two primary maps, drawn in pencil and inked over on paper, offer transverse sections showing the proposed tiered road and rail system. Kennard Thomson planned the levels to encompass the full width of the avenues, using buildings on either side as partial supports. The system would have effectively segregated pedestrians from commercial and private traffic, as well as from local and express trains (not, mind you, Subways). These schematics also illustrate access points from nearby ground-level avenues and his method of integrating shopfronts.

The third plan, compiled several years later in 1931, is a manuscript on surveyor's linen, with pastedown labels. The schematic expands on Kennard's system and hints at his futuristic plans for New York. Note the tall central building, measuring a whopping 2000 feet in height, some 500 feet taller than the Empire State Building (1450 ft), completed in the same year this schematic was drawn (April 11, 1931). It also includes more detail regarding sewers and electrical lines, and adds a new 'auto speedway' level.

Publication History and Census

These are Kennard Thomson's original manuscript plans. The primary image, 'No More Subways,' was published in Port of New York, Harbor, and Marine Review (Vol. 6, January 1927). The first two images, on paper, were drawn in 1927. The third image, while representing the same plan, was drawn in 1931. Unique. These diagrams are jointly owned with Boston Rare Maps.