The day after President McKinley’s death, Richard Croker, grayer and grimmer than ever, stepped off the S.S. Lucania ready to wage political war. Escorted by several top lieutenants as he walked off the pier, Croker’s face was its usual stoic mask. He brushed aside the reporters with a “Nothing to say, boys.” Nothing was more important to Tammany than the imminent mayoral election, for City Hall was the key to everything that nourished the voracious Tammany Tiger—above all the jobs, the permits, the franchises, and all the gears of government-generated boodle. The city was in a quickly escalating state of high political agitation and excitement. Indeed, the whole nation was watching this election.
As drama it did not disappoint. Seth Low, scion of a silk merchant, wealthy ex-mayor of Brooklyn, just-resigned president of Columbia University, led the reform Fusion ticket, running for mayor. Rotund, with sandy, wavy hair and a matching bristle mustache, Low was “very competent, very dignified, and rather dull.” It was an unfortunate fact that people respected Low but did not like him. He was a cold fish. Tammany’s rambunctious chief of police Richard Devery stroked his luxuriant whiskers and bestowed upon Low the jeering nickname of “Little Eva.”
The canny Croker, in a move denounced as “audacious and desperately skillful,” put up for mayor the excellent Edward M. Shepard, a Brooklyn attorney of sterling character, most admired for prosecuting Tammany vote fraud. The reform firebrand Justice William Travers Jerome ran for district attorney, whipping up his tenement audiences to collective outrage over the Ice Trust and the reviled “cadets.” As the raucous election season careened along, Croker holed up in his elegant Democratic Club way up Fifth Avenue. “From early morning until far into the night, the Boss was at work, pouring men and money into crucial districts; driving his lieutenants to their uttermost; tapping every channel of influence and power.”
Election Day—Tuesday November 5—dawned gray and wet, to Tammany’s delight. Many a well-dressed New Yorker, the kind who favored reform, would not want to venture forth in inclement weather. Nonetheless, from the minute the polls opened at 6:00 a.m., the men of Greater New York poured forth to vote. The camera “experts” from newspapers like Joseph Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s American snapped photographs as the candidates voted. By evening, wide rivers of excited New Yorkers flowed into the main avenues looking for news. Those heading to the big plaza at City Hall and newspaper row were unable to advance because the whole place was a great construction pit for August Belmont Jr.’s new subway. Uptown, the huge sea of citizens forced the closing of Broadway as they watched returns on a big sheet on the New York Times Building. Everyone knew it was over as the returns came in from the Lower East Side tenement districts. The crowds gasped. Low, the Silk Stocking reformer, was winning! Tammany was out.
Three days later, on Friday morning at 10:46, Alexander Cassatt telephoned Samuel Rea at the PRR’s sixteenth-floor Manhattan office and left a message, “The purchase of that property ought to be started at once, and I will be glad if you will take up the matter with Mr. B[aldwin] and agree upon a line of action. Call me on the telephone if you want to say anything.” Low’s victory was a most felicitous development for the Pennsylvania Railroad, a triumph engineered in part by William Baldwin and his Committee of Fifteen. The secret buying of the Tenderloin would now begin.
On this very same day, November 8, Cassatt received the definitive answer he had so fervently hoped for—Charles Jacobs reported that he believed the subaqueous railroad tunnels could be safely built and operated, thus making possible the whole gargantuan enterprise. Beginning with a double-track line across New Jersey’s marshy Hackensack Meadows, they would dig two tunnels through the Bergen Cliffs, continue down under the mile-wide Hudson, emerging deep underneath a great terminal. From there two tunnels, each with two tracks, would continue on under and through Manhattan, becoming four separate tunnels under the East River. Two would be for the LIRR, and would thus create a through ride all the way from the mainland to Long Island. The two other tunnels would serve the PRR, whose empty trains would terminate in Sunnyside, Queens. There would be built the largest passenger-car yard in the world. Better yet, in a nine-page preliminary estimate, Jacobs projected a $40 million cost for the whole monumental project, including their own Grand Depot. This was far less than the original $100 million price for the colossal North River Bridge or even Lindenthal’s scaled-back version for $46.5 million. And so the PRR could launch its opening moves in the Tenderloin with confidence.
Within the week, real estate man Douglas Robinson wrote Cassatt, “We have gone systematically to work since Friday to get the prices at which the owners will sell the various plots, and have succeeded in getting prices on several. We think in a couple of weeks we will be able to know pretty well at what price the full plot of land can be bought.” At the same time, Samuel Rea wrote Cassatt warning him, “There has been so much talk about—bridges tunnels subways etc—that property owners on west side in vicinity of our location are skeptical.” The PRR’s opponents especially were already on guard as the railroad studied the real estate chessboard of these strategic blocks. Rea proposed they capture selected properties throughout their site to “establish prices.” Wondered Rea, “Do you not think if we invest say $200,000 now judiciously, and promptly, that we could then ease and go at it leisurely, so as not to excite suspicion?”
And so the great high-stakes real estate acquisition began. As Douglas Robinson would later relate, “The actual work of purchasing was done by three men, the blocks being more or less evenly divided between them, and when they were sent out to make the purchases they, themselves, did not know who was the actual buyer of the property.” Robinson’s three buyers, unaware of one another, but blessed with a string of crisp fall days, fanned out across the Tenderloin carrying big wads of cash in their pockets and option contracts provided by the Title Guarantee & Trust Company. On any given block, they aimed to buy a range of building types to determine, and then set, local values.
During those autumn days, the three men discreetly inquired and sought out those who controlled certain buildings. “The owners,” Robinson would later explain, “being of moderate means and mostly workmen, had to be traced to all parts of the city, and out of the city, but as quickly as it was possible.” And so, the men hopped on the elevated trains, rode the ferries to the other boroughs, quietly tracking down Tiernans, Conklings, Ackermans, and Werckeles. “If his [or her] price corresponded with our appraisal of the lot in question, a copy of the option was drawn and he was induced, if possible, to sign it (and it may be said that the first sellers signed with perfect willingness). Five hundred ($500) dollars was given to the seller and the signature on the option was witnessed, so that it became a binding document.” With speed and secrecy critical, Robinson quickly drew up sales contracts, wrote checks, and dispatched each man to retrace his steps and seal yet another deal.
Despite this caution, rumors were rampant within a week. Robinson scrawled a note to Baldwin, “I’m afraid someone in the Penn is leaking. We tried to buy a piece of property and were told by the owner that she knew what was up…that someone in the employ of Penn told her the RR had decided to buy all the block. I tell you this for what it is worth. A man we bought from last night backed out today said he had heard it definitely and wants a higher price and told him I wouldn’t buy and did so to bluff him.” Undaunted, the PRR scooped up shabby houses and stores and warehouses, for $6,000 here, $40,000 there. Wrote Robinson, “Within two weeks, we had secured a great many lots…thereby establishing…the value of the adjoining parcels…At that time the buildings in the Terminal zone were occupied by many negroes, saloons, dance halls, gambling joints, and for many other purposes which made the work of those who did the buying not only difficult, but also often dangerous; although it is fair to admit that of the large sums carried in cash never one cent was lost through encounters with the owners or their tenants.” Robinson and Rea moved swiftly but carefully, for they needed a good sampling of prices, their biggest future weapon if condemnation became a necessary tactic against owners holding out for big sums. Baldwin sent Robinson’s note about “someone in the Penn leaking” on to Cassatt that same Thursday, suggesting, “It may be well to call off the buying for a few days.”
Then, on December 1 as the weather turned wintry, the New-York Tribune broke the story that it was rumored to be none other than the PRR buying land as fast as it could amidst the brothels and saloons. However, “real estate dealers in the neighborhood of the reported terminal said…they had no definite knowledge.” Baldwin, Cassatt’s point man in Manhattan, was not about to confirm such rumors, saying ingenuously, “I think the story must have arisen from the rumor that a bridge was to be built across the North River.” The paper, in turn, noted that the site was “only a few blocks away from the terminus of the [proposed] North River Bridge.” Baldwin, the executive who knew best how the whole complex political scene operated, wrote Cassatt the next day to commiserate. “The reports about land purchases are very exasperating…Nobody in my office or in the L.I.R.R. knows a thing about the purchases of the Stuyvesant Land Co. There has not been the scratch of a pen. I think that observing people expect you to build a tunnel.” In that first month, the PRR had bought sixty-eight parcels for $2,398,750.
The PRR had tried to further disguise its identity and distract its opponents by creating the Stuyvesant Real Estate Company. But to no avail. The speculators began to circle, scenting easy pickings and profits. For years, said one real estate man, Seventh Avenue had been “like a chinese wall…beyond which no respectable man or woman could safely go. It is known to be filled with thugs, bums, and wicked negroes.” Now, all that would be changing. Sensing his corporate enemies gathering, Cassatt felt forced to press forward before he was truly ready.