The Secret Steam Tunnel System of N.Y.C. (and why it pours out of the street) - IT'S HISTORY
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
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Sprawling beneath the busy streets of New York lays an incredible steam system that provides heat to many of the city’s most iconic landmarks- the steam stacks, to many, serving as icons all their own. Today on It’s History, we will discover the history of the New York City steam lines.
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IT’S HISTORY - Weekly tales of American Urban Decay as presented by your host Ryan Socash.
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» CREDIT
Scriptwriter - Imana Schoch
Editor - Rishi Mittal
Host - Ryan Socash
Sponsored by Masterworks
Chapters:
The History of New York Steam - 00:00
A word from Masterworks - 01:12
When was steam power first used? - 02:49
Steam power in the 1600s - 06:23
How did steam power spread across America? - 07:31
The rise of central steam heat in New York - 08:59
Central steam heat reaches New York City - 11:27
Why are the steam lines underground? - 12:21
How does steam power affect pollution? - 13:25
How does the steam system work? - 13:58
What are the benefits of steam power? - 15:21
Where do the steam lines run? - 16:52
How much steam do the NYC steam lines produce? - 17:48
What do NYC’s iconic steam stacks do? - 18:22
The 2007 Grand Central Steam Explosion - 18:48
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» NOTICE
Some images may be used for illustrative purposes only - always reflecting the accurate time frame and content. Events of factual error / mispronounced word/spelling mistakes - retractions will be published in this section.
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Channel looks interesting, but you're pushing NFTs. I made it to the sponsor and stopped the video. Sorry.
Please turn the level of your voice or turn the level down on music!!! YOU HURT MY EARS when the intro music played!
@@JosiahGould It's disappointing, I really liked this channel. We share a name, that's cool.
Wait up, "The New York steam system produces 1/3 less CO2 per pound delivered, as apposed to onsite boilers that burn 10% more oil" I take it you got that from ConEd and did not read the rest. also how do they come to that conclusion and what the fuck does pressure have to do with heat? Dude do better, your channel is full of pretty quicly "reperched" moronic factoids. Do you even consider if what you are saying is just someone's propaganda and not to believe it just because it comes from "official" sources. Seriously you are quoting soem fact about oil from a system operator that uses natural gas and they have a vested interest in not pushing for the people of the city to have piped natural gas to their buildings. FFS NYC has banned natural gas hookups for new builds due to greenhouse gases, which is complete bullshit considering they ar getting rorted for the inefficient piped steam produced from natural gas.
Great video overall, but a huge missed opportunity to show a map when you were listing off the steam plant locations.
I was working in Manhattan in 2007, a few blocks away from where that steam main burst. When we heard the explosion, at first people thought it was a bomb, the memories of 9/11 still being fresh. When I heard what sounded like a jet engine running full blast, I knew it had to be a steam line bursting open. When we went outside, you could see a big cloud of steam rising up over Lexington Avenue. After they shut down the line, there was a crater about 30 feet across right in the middle of Lexington Avenue. It's kind of amazing that the casualties were so few since it happened right around the time people were leaving work to go home.
How I knew it was steam line was because, some decades earlier, a steam line outside my mother's Manhattan apartment burst, blew a manhole cover into the air, and started pouring out steam. I could hear the roar over the phone when she called to tell me.
The thing is that steam never took off in ancient times was because the other underlying technologies didn't solidify. They've got the principle of steam power but not the prerequisites for steam power, if that makes sense. Their technological context makes it impossible (you need really good steels at low pricetags to even _think_ about making a viable steam engine, and that requires specific type of forge that was out of reach of the ancient world).
My favorite factoid about the 2007 steam explosion, which shows just how powerful it was, is that it threw debris onto the roof of the Chrysler Building.
Very interesting.
Seeing steam pouring out of the striped stacks is such a memorable thing when visiting family in NYC.
I was so fascinated with them when I was a toddler.
I’ve always suspected those stacks were for the leaks. Glad they could identify and fix them. Such a fascinating system.
Thank You!
For 52 years I’ve been in the dark about the NYC steam system. I’ve seen many movies and TV shows where you see steam rising from the streets but never knew what they were all about.🙌
My brothers and sisters in IUOE been a big part of running and maintaining this system.
Steam really is a remarkable source of energy when it is available. It might be old fashioned in the sense that we have been utilizing it for quite awhile now. However the fact that we have been using it for so long speaks volumes about how good it is.
Back in the 80/90s I've use to travel for business to NYC on November and December in the Madison avenue. The most beautiful days of my life!
I remember looking for steam coming out of manhole covers to shoot music videos. It always had that haunting effect you can only get in NYC in those wee hours of the night.
I’ve always seen these but never this and how steam literally changed this city. I love this channel!!
Thanks for another great history lesson on my hometown, Ryan. I'd love to see more on the Bronx, like maybe about how Spuyten Dyvil was diverted?
I often wonder what might've been if the Romans had realized the significance of Hero's engine. Possibly an industrial revolution 2000 years before it actually happened? What incredible technologies would we have with an extra 2000 years of rapid progress?
Now your going down the road of ethnocentric white nationalism.
Well we would probably have those flying cars that the jetsons promised
the channel toldinstone has a great video addressing exactly that question
Hero's engine really had no implications for the Romans. Turbines reach their peak efficiencies as tip velocities approach one-half of the steam spouting speed. So, we're talking transonic speeds. There is no really practical way that they could have made one of his aeolipiles even come close to spinning fast enough to produce a viable amount of power. If they had, there is no way that they could have come up with a speed reduction setup that could turn that motion into mechanical power that could be applied to the machines they possessed. Given their technologies at the time, Hero's engine could never have been more than a curiosity. I'd say the Romans could probably have built workable low-pressure piston engines on the order of Newcomen ... or maybe even early Watt machines. Those are OK if you want to pump water out of coal mines, if you have a lot of scrap coal laying around to support the truly horrible efficiency of the engine.
It was all here thousands of years ago they just reset it and annihilated the people. What industrial revolution? They are holding the tech and going to release it on the post reset people, we didn't build any of this stuff. Look at how many tunnels under NYC can people start doing the math we couldn't built it today never built it yesterday wasn't us!!!
Who remembers old movies when those pipes weren't there? Such a dramatic scene seeing them come up out of the street.
When I was a kid, steam came out of every crack and corner of the city. It was quite something in the winter.
I used to be fascinated by high pressure steam and gas distribution in the city of NY. Now as a Gas distribution operator for Con Edison, I’m finally living this dream I’ve had for a few years. 🙏🏽
Wow, that was phenomenal Ryan, keep up the amazing work !
A fascinating edition today! As a former power plant craftsman, I am still interested in how steam was used and distributed 100 years ago.
Great video! One note... at timecode 15:51 the image used is in fact Shepard Hall at City College of New York (CCNY) and not New York University (NYU). I earned my BFA in Film there and spent 3 years making shorts in tower inside Shepard Hall. The view is from the east side of the building with Saint Nicholas Terrance running adjacent to the building. My grandfather and I love your videos!
Thanks for the info! and thanks for supporting the channel!
This subject always fascinates me. We still have some buildings opporating on a similar system where I live. So it's neat to hear it's history, and how other places implement it.
The Watt steam engine (ie the engine that started the industrial revolution) was only really possible with advances in metal working so even if people had the idea centuries before they did not have the ability to create high pressure boilers, cylinders of the Watt engine etc.
Actually, the Watt engine was very low pressure. James Watt was afraid of explosions and refused to let his engines be operated at higher pressures. In fact, early Watt-Boulton engines were actually atmospheric devices with the condensing steam creating a vacuum and ambient air pressure driving the piston.
Awesome video I always wanted to know the history of the steam system in New York
The movie "The Bone Collector" from back in the day 1999 depticed the steam tunnel system pretty well.
my father called heat "the steam" till he his death 20 years ago. oil heat? electric? nope -- it was all "the steam"
a lot of elderly people will also say they're turning on "the gas" while using an electric stove
A lot of small and large cities used this method to deliver heat to buildings Wilkes-Barre pa had it it's now abandoned and just about forgotten now. I believe they charged a flat rate to have the service to a building commercial and residential it was economical for everyone but it's impossible to meter. As times change profits from gas, oil and electric replaced it unless you live in a rural area wood is usually not allowed due to pollution issues working fire places in Citys are rare mostly due to insurance companies not allowing, it's All about the $$$$$$$
You pick the best topics
I worked in that east 59th street steam house under the 59th st bridge..and all of the Con edison power plants and indian point..nuke plant.Welding dept!i also worked in the west 59th st plant shown here,that was the 9th ave els power for its subways..i was in the waterside steam explosion of Nov 1992..water hammer was the cause ...
I work in an area where a old coal mining town existed, it was rather modern given the era, it had a boiler plant providing steam and electricity to the mines and mine structures and also piped steam to some of the houses of the higher ups in the mine like foremen and the superintendent, town no longer exists the houses have been long torn down, the boiler plant/machine shop still exists and is used as warehouses by the company I work for, the biggest issue we constantly face is if we ever have to dig we almost always hit the old steam pipes the whole area might as well be reinforced like rebar with the plumbing and railroad rails, doesn’t matter if you are using heavy equipment or a shovel your path of digging is always interrupted by those pesky pipes that are also full of water, rupture one and the hole fills with water in seconds, I can’t even imagine the conditions of trying to dig in NYC with all the old buried infrastructure, it must really be a nightmare at times
the main reason they use those white and orange stacks is to raise the steam higher, so the drivers can see and don't crash.
In 1972 a friend and i went to the London Tavern near times square, his twitchy older cousin was the bartender. The place was dead midday when suddenly this crazed man stood in the middle of the street over a steamin' manhole, and dropped his pants, proceeding to swing his butt grimacing steaming his nether area
A crowd developed quickly, followed by the inevitable pretzel vendor. Cops arrived and tried to disperse the crowd (the man still bumpin and grindin looking insane) but the pretzel vendor would have none of it screaming PRETZELS HOT PRETZELS.
Finally the cops chained his cart to a lamppost, threatened the crowd with tickets and dragged the still depantsed crazy guy away to a paddy wagon (they still had them then).
We got a round of drinks on the house from my friends cousin. I never laughed so hard in my life. True story
My f-I-l was a Steam Engineer at Con-Ed for years. Really interesting engineering.
A good starting view... with a few important omissions that folks can pick up later if they are interested. 🖒🤠
Was in NYC a couple times in the early 70s and wondered about what I called mist coming up from a grate by our hotel. At the time we thought it was sewer drains that ran open underground like in some Europeon cities. Now I know "the rest of the story"
Cheers 🇨🇦
Right. I lived in NYC in the 70s and never saw one of those orange cones, but I always saw steam coming up through metal grates. It often made me wonder if there was another city below NYC's streets.
Thank you
Talked to a Philly boiled room operator. His hospital was connected to the center city steam loop but they had their own boilers and only used the steam loop in an emergency. Cost them between 1,200 & $1,500 just open the backup steam loop.With all steam boilers over 15 or 20 pounds you need a round the clock licensed engineer to keep an eye on boilers so it could be cheaper veto purchase all your steam.
Awesome! Love steam.
Whilst staying in a town in Latvia,the town is heated the same way,I also saw the steam plant,the block of flats I stayed in had communal heat,I asked about this,for a small charge you get this heat.
Cool video
Pittsburgh also has a steam facility that heats many buildings within the downtown area.
My Dad was stationed at Aviano, AFB for four years, from '69-'73, and during this time we found a little house, some thirty miles to the west, in a small village, called Bedoia. We had a fairly new house, and it was set up with a garage you could access, underneath the house, via a concrete ramp, and, if you stood at the garage door down below, their was a walkway, to the right, that led you to a small steel door, and lo and, behold their was a red monster or boiler in this small concrete room, fed by fuel oil delivered by a tanker truck from the base, it would scare you when it fired up, and heated water to all the rooms with radiators, underneath the windows, to turn up the heat on a particular radiator, you had to open a small valve to make it hotter, and in addition to radiators underneath the window, their was a large box, mounted high above the window, and to the right was a flat pull rope for raising and lowering the shutter which for the most part remained in that box over the window. Since this heating system was so effective you could find a small plastic water container hanging on the radiator. The air being so dry, you fill up these containers with water to humidify the air!
Some sources say that steam power was used in the ancient Library of Alexandria, opening and closing the massive doors in its main entrance.
Arch Obler of "Inner Sanctum" fame set an episode of this radio drama under a New York department store, amidst the tunnels and steam pipe network. Quite spooky.
Where i live we use superheated water instead of steam.
A nother good story man very interesting ❗❗❗✌️✝️👍🖖👌♥️☮️
I'm from Australia. I never knew the system was so big in New York 😳
Was there ever a hydraulic system in New York for the docks ?
There was quite an extensive one in London to power the many cranes on the warehouses next to the Thsmes - a few of the pumping stations still survive.
manchester had a big similar steam network as well.
I don't know about NYC but the Steam network in Seattle is still in use today and you can tour many of the plants like Georgetown Steam Plant but some of the old ones were closed down and converted to other uses like Lake Union plant I think is an office building, maybe. The Coal-Gas Plant was turned in to a park called Gas Works Park. It's not a big network but it's cool to tour a working one.
@@drscopeify I suppose the UK doesn't quite get the cold that I've seen in photos of New York. About the only thing that comes vaguely close is the waste water from Battersea Power Station was used to heat a housing estate built on the other side of the Thames. I'll have to Google how the central power station at Bankside which is pretty much directly opposite 'the city' dumped its waste heat !
Maybe London being older and more spread out had something to do with it too. And that we didn't really go for sky scrapers until a lot later than the US - our legacy Victorian buildings and office blocks were heated by coal fires !
Interesting about Manchester though - something else to Google !
curtains an chemical colors can heat an entie twon to +5 -5 degree, thats more efficient as anything ever tried
I've delivered Maine produce there off Williamsburg bridge about 1 mile on the rite unloaded it in streets about every night
😄👉🏼 now I kn what the hell is those steam is for now lol thank you
Another great video, but I was sure there was going to be a Marilyn Monroe reference in there somewhere 😉
Her skirt was blown up by a subway train not steam, was it not?
The homeless people in NYC have always benefitted from the smaller steam grates and leaks all over the city. I remember as a kid, wondering how they could survive in the winter, but then I noticed that many had found small steam emission leaks, which they would build their tents, shacks or box houses over, for heating. In the 1960s and 1970s, the steam was hissing out of cracks, holes and grates nearly everywhere.
Mugsy has quite the mug 😜. And those teeth 😁❤️
"all they needed to do was think up some pistons, cylinder, some valves, you'd have an engine" Yeah and if they put the aeolipile on some wings they'd have a plane.
It really doesn't work like that. Heron's Sphere was at most a device for practical philosophy and more commonly believed to be a temple wonder, a device that would impress the common people into giving money to the temple.
Vancouver Canada has a steam network downtown.
The steam powered clock is quite an interesting feature . Saw it Oct2019. Always a crowd watching it.
"One gallon of water is converted into eight pounds of steam!"
Well, yeah 🙄 A gallon of water weighs just a little more than eight pounds...
But I'm really not getting "For example a 600 sq ft building in NY would need approximately 1,500 sq ft dedicated to the boiler alone". 16:27
Maybe off by a factor of 1,000???
Back in the 19th century, district steam heat kept the busy streets of lower Manhattan from being blocked all winter by coal wagons and other wagons busy removing the clinker and ash.
Petroleum wasn't in widespread use at that time and draft animals have their own downsides in an urban environment.
Having steam generating plants located next to piers and rail yards was the _only thing_ that made it possible to build _up_ within such a constrained footprint.
A horse age system is explosion free until 2007. Sounds about right.
1 gallon of water converts to 8 pounds of steam😂😂😂😂 clever.
New York is a steampunk city.
Lockport baby!!!!
It seems they cannot leave their dream, there's something moving in the sidewalk steam. . .
0:50 is anyone getting pinky and the brain vibes because this feels like its the same building
Who knew? Growing up in NYC I had heard about underground steam pipes but couldn't understand what they for. I just assumed every building ( like my own apartment building ) had it's own boiler for hot water and steam heat. Never occurred to me that there were large steam plants that delivered steam to many buildings throughout the city. Does this mean they only deliver steam to heat buildings in the cold months?
Nope, it is all season system because when steam is used to cool a building it is actually just turning a steam turbine that is connected to the compressor of a regular central air system basically replacing the large electric motor that would otherwise drive that compressor
Rest of the world uses water in systems like this. No steam explosions.
My college has a steam system. It comes up through the sidewalks.
wtf. they have a steam utility in new York still! whoa! i would expect this to be something done YEARS ago. but quickly fall off now that electric is everywhere. and even heat pumps being 200%+ efficient. that's crazy. but i don't see it lasting too much longer when these big skyscrapers start updating and renovate to more modern systems to save on utilities.
So I'm out here on the west coast and you give this in depth video about how steam gets around new York. But what on earth do you do with this ? We don't have steam plants on the west coast so i really wish I knew what goes on with that steam. Maybe that's another video.
We have steam plants on the west coast, in Seattle at least.
i once worked as a steam fitter. It's a hard job.
Who came here after visiting NY for the first time ?
Have you ever spores the Alamo and SanAntonio?
The word is exspored
If I'm not mistaken doesn't Con Edison run the Steam plants
I think so. Though whether CE is the sole operator I am unsure.
It'd be great if they could figure out how to harness the waste for electrical generation.
Actually, in many cities, it works the other way around. Waste heat from power plants is used for district heating
Co-Generation is that but the other way around, They take the output pipe off the turbines and send them out into the network. So the steam spins the turbine and makes electricity and then rather than being condensed or vented its used for the district heating.
That guy at 19:04 looks pretty steamed up.
A history of steam power with no mention of James Watt?
no embedded commercials I pay for commercial free
I love your videos. However, you could translate these medieval units of measurement into modern units of measurement, used by the civilized world, such as liters, kilograms, meters, centimeters, degrees celcius, etc.
The Romans didn't have steel. It would've been a hard to have a similar industrial revolution
You can not see steam!
It's colorless.
What you see is condensation from steam!
I really don't see how the environmentalist think that a distributed steam system is more energy efficient and more environmentally friendly than having dedicated boilers directly in the building(s) being served. It takes a lot of energy to superheat steam at such high pressures to be distributed, a lot of wasted energy is lost due to high stack temperatures from the boilers due to the high steam pressure and steam. And then take into account the losses of heat from the steam traveling such long distances through pipes, etc, not to mention the leaks everywhere wasting energy in large amounts. Just doesn't make since at all.
So Ryan, what you're saying is society has to choose between climate change or human slavery?
Steam built and powered the modern world 🌎
...sounds like a good move idea.
How the world would've been different if Romans made a breakthrough in steam technology and the empire never fell.
How does steam cool buildings?
It makes you open the windows
AC compressors driven by steam turbines rather than by electric motors.
@@paulanderson7796 ohhhh that seems obvious in hindsight lol
the incinerators us to burn alot of horse poop and hay and stuff .. then the car became a thing after tons of sewage was routed .. how muck steam is made from metane made from the city sewers and i guess that was the plan? if a thing?
in my town the furnace control interface is named honeywel and i seen a bunch of documentaries on the old honey wagons still in use in some areas .. made me think
The Queen of England owns Manhattan Island.
She been trying to get rid of it for years, but no buyers.
I front of my building on the floor you can see one I also live in Manhattan I wonder if they place it intentionally in certain neighborhoods cus why is it I front of my building where all the Latin immigrants populate the area idk it’s kinda suspicious always thought so
Why are you describing the Manhattan steam system as secret? It is hardly a secret perhaps not well, but evey Manhattan resident or worker knows the story.
It's almost like people are watching from other countries/locations coupled with the idea of a click bait title?
Great video, but unfortunately you have not been very careful when accepting sponsorship from a company described by many as a scam. Don't take my word for it, just read what people who tried to invest have to say about it, then decide whether you are doing your viewers a favour. I see plenty of red flags when going through the reviews.
I am like number 839
I always thought these pipes were fart exhausts. My late husband needed these when he had a night of PBR and burritos. Oh my! ! !! !
Secret? It's not secret at all.
The long drift away from the topic of steam heat in NY to common, general steam engines was not needed. Waste of time.
💪⬛👍
lol "secret"
Clickbait works, people
I'm thankful i got paid very fast through this top profile ☝☝☝it's a very big help for my financial life and business
Steam fart 💨
Pretty good job but you reveal yourselves as boneheads when it comes to studying up on history.
in the invention of this modern steam engine, there is nobody so important as James Watt. after Thomas Newcomen did Indeed invent such a great machine, James Watt made such an advancement that erroneously he is most often credited as the "inventor" of the steam engine, even though he isn't. his Improvement was just staggering, enabling the rise of locomotive driven railroads, let alone vast textile mills, as well as numerous other industries in England, which is why England and Scotland became legitimately known as "the workshop to the world."
Subsequently, steam-driven transportation and Manufacturing spread across Europe, the United States ultimately to Japan. This is known as the "Industrial Revolution." by any chance, have you heard of this phrase? You need to bone up your on your history, my friend.
James Watt is THE MAN. In his honor, we have the electrical unit of energy called the Watt. What a fantastic Scotsman. No James Watt, no modern industrial world, and no industrialized civilization.
Before James Watt, the world still was essentially dependent on agricultural output to furnish the Lion's Share of human prosperity. after Watt, the world truly became industrialized, which increased Mankind's aggregate available wealth, Mankind's average standard of living (nutrition, life expectancy, education,, etc) made staggering leaps, and continues to.
Despite the world's ongoing troubles, the average person today is still WAY better off living in an industrialized, mechanized civilization, as compared to living in an essentially agriculturally driven civilization, that existed before Watts invention merely 200 years ago. We've come a long way, baby.
It is unfortunate that Watt wasn't even mentioned here. His improvements to Newcomen's design are the only reason the engine was useful to mechanized industry.
😭 pքɾօʍօʂʍ
This old stuff needs shut down
NEVER WALK THROUGH IT!!! It fucking stinks
That might be the condensate running back to the steam plant.