The New York That Could Have Been
If there is a plaque commemorating the location of the entrance to Alfred Ely Beach's pneumatic railway, built in secret below 265 Broadway, in lower Manhattan, the writer Sam Lubell and I did not find it on a ninety-degree day in August. Once upon a time, the basement of this building across from New York's City Hall was frescoed and furnished with a piano, a plashing fountain, and goldfish tanks. Admission to the s…