Riding the New York Subway

A history of New York subway passengers as they navigated the system's constraints while striving for individuality, or at least a smooth ride.

When the subway first opened with much fanfare on October 27, 1904, New York became a city of underground passengers almost overnight. In this book, Stefan Höhne examines how the experiences of subway passengers in New York City were intertwined with cultural changes in urban mass society throughout the twentieth century. Höhne argues that underground transportation--which early passengers found both exhilarating and distressing--changed perceptions, interactions, and the organization of everyday life.Preface to the English Edition xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
1 Utopian Passengers 21
2 Machines and the Masses 73
3 Techniques of the Senses 133
4 Lonely Robots 187
5 Crisis and Complaint 213
6 Limits of Containment 257
Notes 273
Bibliography 339
Index 367“In this rich and fascinating study, Stefan Höhne immerses us in the world of the New York subway system, using the figure of the modern passenger as a focal point for his analysis.”
—Matthew Gandy, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge
 
“Höhne’s meticulous excavation reveals the rituals and rationality of one of the key innovations of modern urbanism, showing how the New York subway system became both a technology of power and the city’s most anxiety-ridden public space.”
—Sharon Zukin, author of The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech, and the New Economy
 
“Riding the New York Subway is a fascinating complement to traditional infrastructure studies. Viewing that famous conveyance through subway passenger culture, it provides insight on how we respond to technology in our daily lives.”
—Martin V. Melosi, author of Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York CityStefan Höhne is a a cultural historian of urbanization and technology and a Mercator Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen, Germany.