Climbing great heights to construct the newest buildings or digging deep underground to maintain the tunnels that carry our subway, water, and drainage systems, the city's workers make sure that New York runs like a well-oiled machine.

By Lawrence Stelter Since the beginning of European colonization, the trade of goods and ideas created prosperity throughout the area around New York Bay. Industrialization further fueled growth and expansion, sometimes at exponential levels. As the population spread out, people worked, worshipped and took their recreation in places far from where they lived. Thus public transportation developed and inexorably grew. In 1832 the horse-drawn coach appeared, and soon thereafter came the horse car, which ran on rails. After the Civil War the horse-car network became inadequate to serve a population that was approaching one million. City leaders sought a means of transportation that would be separate from and unimpeded by the congested streets. Read this in its original format here.