Rochester Buried Its 1842 Canal Bridge Under a Road in 1924, Then Ran a Subway Inside It

#rochester #eriecanal #subway In downtown Rochester, New York, cars cross Broad Street every day on top of an empty subway tunnel. The tunnel runs through the inside of a bridge, and the bridge is an 1842 stone aqueduct built to carry the Erie Canal over the Genesee River. A tablet on its side carries two dates, 1823 and 1842. The first aqueduct was built of porous sandstone and fell apart in the Genesee winters. The second one was built from limestone, and it was built so well that it outlived every job it was ever given. The canal was abandoned in 1920. In 1924 the city buried the aqueduct under a new road and laid a subway in its dry bed. The subway was rushed underground after an interurban car jumped the track on Main Street in 1922 and killed an eighteen-year-old whose name the record does not keep. Within four years of opening, every interurban line it was built for was gone. The last passenger ride ended at 1:35 in the morning on July 1, 1956, and taxpayers went on paying for the subway until 1960. Newsprint trains kept running through the old canal until the late 1990s. Now the state wants $175 million to take the road off the top again. We looked at why Rochester built a subway inside a canal bridge, why it failed, and why the oldest layer is the one still standing. SOURCES New York State Assembly Documents No. 9, geological survey, 1836 Brunner, Olmsted Jr. and Arnold city plan for Rochester, 1911 George F. Swain, report on a subway in the canal bed, 1920 Rochester History, city historical journal, 1974 National Register of Historic Places listing, 1976 New York State, Aqueduct Reimagined updated design, October 2024 Weathered Ground covers the roads, towns, and places America walked away from, and what is left of them. #rochester #eriecanal #subway #abandoned