New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City
Julia Solis
Routledge, November 2004 (2007 in paperback)

Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 11-1/2 inches | 252 pages | 210 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0415950138 | $47.95

Publisher Description:
Did alligators ever really live in New York's sewers" What's it like to explore the old aqueducts beneath the city" How many levels are beneath Grand Central Station" And how exactly did the pneumatic tube system that New York's post offices used to employ work"

In this richly illustrated historical tour of New York's vast underground systems, Julia Solis answers all these questions and much, much more. New York Underground takes readers through ingenious criminal escape routes, abandoned subway stations, and dark crypts beneath lower Manhattan to expose the city's basic anatomy. While the city is justly famous for what lies above ground, its underground passages are equally legendary and tell us just as much about how the city works.dDAB Commentary: Julia Solis's now 15-year-old book (17, if we take its 2002 first edition in German into account) reminds me of two other books, both published since 2004. First is Kate Ascher's The Works from 2005, which shares the exact same subtitle as New York Underground; in it Ascher explains "The Anatomy of the City" (NYC in particular, but cities in general) through diagrams and other specially made illustrations. Second is Moses Gates' Hidden Cities: A Memoir of ...