New York's Underground Societies | Cities of the Underworld (S2, E9) | Full Episode | History

new york with 8.2 million people it's america's  most populous city known for its famous skyline   but its towering landmarks  only hide the dark world below   man this is cool an underworld built by mobsters  bootleggers and secret societies from a midtown   speakeasy that defied the feds oh man fought the  mob and served new york's most famous clientele   oh how cool is this to a massive labyrinth beneath  the streets chiseled out by an elusive brotherhood   with one of the deadliest jobs on the planet  to the oldest subway tunnel in the world one   here underneath the streets of brooklyn new  york a tunnel hiding in assassin's diary and   the secret world of the freemasons there's even  the cd underground of an ancient chinese gang   we're peeling back the layers of time on cities  of the underworld new york's secret societies i'm don wildman i'm in new york city now most  of the world would recognize this city's famous   skyline and most of its 8 million residents would  tell you they know everything about this town   but the fact is the foundations of new york were  laid by secret societies to this day there's an   elusive brotherhood who dig billion dollar tunnels  beneath this entire city but it goes back even   further to immigrant enclaves to chinese gangs  and to the mob even america's most famous and   most powerful secret society the freemasons laid  the foundations of revolution and the birth of a   nation right here in new york now for many people  new york is just the greatest city in the world   but there's a flip side to the metropolis everyone  thinks they know and it's one few have seen before   from the mid-1800s on the big apple built its  massive underworld nearly a thousand miles of   subway lines four hundred 6430 seven miles  of sewers and over a dozen transport tunnels   running under its rivers within that complex  web are 17th century forts smugglers tunnels   and dens of vice an unseen subterranean maze  beneath one of the world's most important cities   in the roaring 1920s a different  kind of underworld emerged   no town partied like new york city from its  exclusive downtown restaurants to its uptown   jazz clubs the only problem was most of it  was illegal in january 1920 the federal ban   on alcohol took effect prohibition put the  nation's bars and saloons out of business   but the ban only sent the highly lucrative booze  business underground in just five years up to one   hundred thousand speakeasies opened all over  the city most owned and operated by the mob   midtown manhattan became the secret gathering spot  for new york's high society to get a drink this is   52nd street in manhattan today it's rockefeller  center but back in the days of prohibition this   was one speakeasy after another swing street they  called it or the wettest street in new york today   there's one last speakeasy remaining the famous  21 and i'm meeting a guy who's taking me inside   by the 1930s the stretch of west 52nd street  between 5th and 6th avenues was home to over   30 speakeasies but the swanky 21 club stood out  from the crowd the club's current manager brian   mcguire showed me how the legendary speakeasy  survived gangland threats and federal raids with   state-of-the-art security and an underground lair  now is this the original room that we're in here   this is the original restaurant yes done this  is uh this is building 21 21 west 52nd street   okay uh which was the original restaurant 21  today is three brownstone buildings buildings 21   19 and 17 the other two buildings being acquired  over time but the original restaurant was just   this one brownstone the brownstone looked  ordinary from the outside but its interior   was designed to please its famous clientele 21  was only open to the best of the best in new york   movie stars millionaires even the mayor was a  regular this was probably the creme de la creme   toyota 21 might have been one of the top two or  three in new york city at the time the club's   reputation spread and brought unwanted intruders  federal agents who raided the restaurant in 1930   and mobsters who wanted a piece of its wealthy  clientele the owners fought back with an ingenious   security system that would prevent 21 from being  caught red-handed again their top priority was   hiding the illegal stash over 2 000 cases of wine  and liquor with the ultimate in urban camouflage this is the wine cellar here well the wine cell  is here if you can find it it's an alcove it's   an alcove you know how do you get there where  your right hand is is you'll find an 18-inch meat   skewer this thing okay and what's good is that's  the key to the door now show me how it's done okay   there's thousands of holes they found the right  hole and the click you just heard was the lock on   a four thousand pound door open out this is four  thousand thousand pounds because it's part of the   foundation wall don you look pretty strong so i'm  going to ask you to give that a little push whoa   it's a brick wall basically  oh man it is really heavy wow   i am seriously pushing here oh man oh how  cool is this that is a whole brick wall look   at this thing look it's like there's the brick  wall built into a steel frame look behind it   and there's the rock and the and  that's really amazing the hidden   door was an ingenious last line of defense but  security at 21 clubs started from the top down   the doorman kept an eye out through a window  in the front door if he saw federal agents he   hit an alarm buzzer the patrons would down their  drinks while the bartender pressed a second button   this triggered fold away shelves on the bar to tip  backwards into the walls dumping all the liquor   bottles and glasses within the walls everything  fell down pre-built shafts that fed directly into   new york's massive sewer system by the time the  feds got through the front door nothing was left   but a restaurant full of well-heeled customers  the wine cellar was not only ingeniously hidden   by the secret door and the meat skewer lock it  wasn't even in the same building in 1930 21 didn't   span all three buildings as it does today so when  federal agents searched its lowest levels looking   for secret compartments they never suspected that  they'd been built into the neighboring basement look at this door it is a relic of a time the  stakes were high i mean prohibition was the source   of corruption murder mayhem in this country and  for them for the owners of this establishment 21   this door prevented the worst possible disaster  that the federal government finds out that you   have this a wine cellar booze of this caliber  i mean look at it it's amazing it's a treasure   now but at the time it was dynamite  although in 1919 not all booze was top shelf   and you got some uh your basic gin domestic gin  not just domestic gin this is bathtub gin made in   uh as you can see in 1919 so this is the real  prohibition kind of that's a real prohibition   stuff the secret seller's greatest protection was  its famous clientele in fact this basement was   the private drinking parlor for the mayor of new  york jimmy walker who liked his booze as much as   he liked chorus girls he needed a place away from  the prying eyes of the public to indulge in both   and didn't take too kindly to the fed's  attempts to shut down his favorite hangout   this was his actual booth and he would be  down here when the raids would be happening   up there yeah the one the one time where 21  was like officially raided by the government   jimmy walker was actually in the restaurant he  was down in the booth sitting here having a drink   found out that the restaurant was being raided  by the government and was so infuriated that he   got a telephone brought to him and he  called the new york city police force   to come over and take it and tell all of  the federal agents cause yes that's good   21 club's owners were able to operate without  the mob but during prohibition mobsters had as   much power as any politician and they wanted a  piece of 21's action a cut-throat gangster named   legs diamond tried to take over the club in 1931  and even put a contract out on the 21's owners   then he got really mad when he found out that  his girlfriend had been given a private tour   of the basement kitchen by club patron ernest  hemingway came downstairs with their drinks   came into the kitchen here at 21 and uh before  you know it they had uh one thing led to another   one thing led to another and right here right  here on the stairwells yeah we're at the spot   where ernest hemingway had his way with where  did lex diamonds go from luckily for hemingway   and the club leg's diamond was assassinated in  albany the next day by another gangster in the   bootlegging trade two years later prohibition  ended gangsters and feds were no longer a threat   while other speakeasies shut down 21 didn't in  fact it became one of new york's most exclusive   restaurants its hidden wine cellar transformed it  into one of the elite wine collections in the city   to this day 21 secrets are the very reason it  survived in 1626 a dutchman bought the island   of manhattan from native americans for 24  today it would cost more than 8 billion new york city's crowded underworld is filled with  rumors and legends abandoned subway stations ghost   trains even railroad tracks that lead to  nowhere but while these stories became the   stuff of urban legends few new yorkers realize  that there's actually a highly skilled society   hollowing out new york's underground hundreds  of them have died working on one of the most   deadly jobs in the world turning new york's  bedrock into a labyrinth beneath the city   walking around new york you tend to get caught  up in the bustle of people and the towering   skyscrapers above but before anything gets built  up here an entire world has to be engineered down   below and for over 130 years an elusive group of  specially trained guys have been working round the   clock to do just that they're called the sandhogs  and they work up to 500 feet below the surface   to keep new york running up above sand hogs get  their name from their origins as diggers in new   york sandy soil but such little documentation  exists on them that all we do know has been   passed down only from generation to generation  so i met up with a third generation sand hog   rich fitzsimmons finally got to meet who got  me exclusive exposure to the select group to   find out what daily life is like tunneling over a  hundred feet beneath new york so yeah we're going   to show you around the hog house introduce you to  some of them these sand hogs or local union 147   are contracted by the city to do some of the  largest and toughest projects in new york's vast   underworld ever since their first gig in 1872  if there was an underground project in new york   chances are the sandhogs were responsible for  it the subway the sewers the lincoln tunnel the   foundations for the brooklyn bridge the list  of their work is massive all right here we go sandhog house early in the morning first shift  getting down quarter seven in the morning   we're going down together on  the man trip train here we go   outside an elevator takes us down 85 feet to  the man trip train a subterranean work train   that works throughout the day eight stories  deep into the heart of new york's bedrock the tunnel is so far below the surface it actually  runs beneath the east river and it serves a   two-fold purpose bringing workers from the hog  house in queens to their underground work site 1.6   miles away in manhattan and it also removes the  nearly 3 200 tons of rock and debris that the sand   hogs clear out every day from this huge excavation  project right out here is a conveyor belt   it's taking out the muck that they cut that's  what they call it out to the vertical conveyor   out in the access tunnel they used to blast  and carry out rock the old-fashioned way   now it's getting revolutionary the muck  the sandhogs clear out is making room for   a project that's been in the works for over 40  years the east side access when completed this   new three and a half mile tunnel will connect the  long island railroad to grand central terminal   a long-weighted and much-needed connection  to ease overcrowding on the new york subway   but how do the sandhogs remove miles  of solid manhattan bedrock the answer   the tunnel boring machine i got to get a hold of  the basics here we are in a tunnel that has been   literally bored out by a single machine correct  kind of a miracle isn't it that this thing could   do this such as precise job as that yep yep  no doubt i the actual machine is kind of   modeled on the same principle of an earthworm the  previous method for creating a tunnel was much   more treacherous the sandhogs used conventional  drills to create holes in the bedrock loaded   them with dynamite and blasted forward but besides  being dangerous the blasts were unpredictable and   uneven progress could be as little as a few  feet a day today the tunnel boring machine   drills directly into solid manhattan bedrock chews  it up and spits out chunks of rock behind it for   easy and safe disposal progress has skyrocketed  averaging nearly 50 feet per day look at this wall   i mean it looks like it's been finished off with  concrete this is actually that's the rock this   is what's been bored through manhattan bedrock is  notoriously unpredictable the depth of the bedrock   from the surface changes throughout manhattan to  make sure they have consistent and stable tunnels   east side access is dug 140 feet deep but boring  through bedrock is only step one sand dogs have   to remove tons of debris secure the tunnel against  collapse and run utility and waistlines literally   creating the tunnel as the machine digs and these  are sand hogs too these are all sand hogs yeah they got a shovel in their hand there's santa  and if they got a shovel in the hand and they're   not there's trouble while the machine has made  life somewhat easier and safer for the sandhogs   there's an invisible and deadly threat they  all have to be aware of this is really what's   so deadly really you see all the you know  you can see the shiny particles in there yeah   uh that's that's our biggest enemy down here when  the dust is evident and when the air quality isn't   as good as it is right now we would have  mass on it so the the the mica the silica   it gets ground up into a very fine dust correct  and you get that in your lungs but this is the   life of a sand hog every day cranes and  winches lower enormous drills bulldozers   and buckets filled with three thousand pounds of  rock over their heads rocks fall tunnels flood and   because sand hogs dig so deep they face another  threat the bends during their first project   laying the foundations of the brooklyn bridge  27 sandhogs died digging under the east river   people literally died and it was undocumented  because back in 1883 even new york city hospitals   and the the records department in the city itself  wasn't that green well because they would have   been the only people going that depth for that  long anywhere and accidents are common in 1982   two train cars broke loose and traveled unmanned  down a steep slope the sandhogs couldn't hear   them coming because of the loud drilling one man  was pinned against a wall by the car and another   had to have his foot sawed off with a pocketknife  to escape we're basically sight unseen not like a   bridge builder yeah not like a guy doing sidewalks  or doing a trump towers some people do say where   uh a guarded a secret society a secret subculture  but you're a positive force in society well   we want to keep new york city a competitive  city we want to go be more competitive into   the 21st and 22nd century we can't have any uh  any other city outside in new york you know that new york is famous for its legendary subway system  with millions of passengers riding the rails 24 7   every day of the year and there are some locals  who would tell you they know every inch of new   york's 850 miles of subway line but for over  a century there have been rumors of a ghost   tunnel a long lost subway line that predates  even the oldest subway tunnels in the world   and that's how it remained lost and forgotten  until a gutsy group of urban explorers   finally found the holy grail  of new york city's underworld   most people think london has the oldest subway in  the world but new york actually opened the first   subway tunnel almost 20 years before london's  underground went public the tunnel runs 30 feet   beneath brooklyn's atlantic avenue but it's much  more than a relic of old new york the tunnel is   filled with legends here bootleggers stashed their  moonshine an assassin hid his long-lost diary   and the country's most famous secret society the  freemasons laid the foundations of the world's   oldest subway station since building a train  tunnel in 1844 underground was a huge project   that took money and political clout the freemasons  were the only ones who could pull it off in 1980 an urban explorer named bob diamond  unearthed the tunnel and its secrets right here   he was going to show me his amazing discovery but  first we had to stop brooklyn traffic so this is   it right here this is it cool yeah that's the way  in all right how are we gonna get this open okay   what we're gonna do is i'm gonna go and open this  up i'm gonna pry this open a little bit from this   end okay nice yeah you're gonna take this hook  get it underneath and pass it back to it okay all right you got electricity huh electricity and  so is this is this legal what we're doing well it   looks like it's a little bit gorilla but it's  actually totally legal i've had a contract with   the city of new york for 20 years to do this  all right follow you down okay yeah follow me   going here underneath the  streets of brooklyn new york   into the oldest subway tunnel  in the world how cool is that oh man so wait so this whole thing looks like  it was filled in with dirt it was the dirt came   across all the way across like this so i had about  this much space to crawl on my belly between that   manhole cover and the concrete wall so you're in  the pitch dark in the pitch dark with an air tank   on my back oh really we didn't know if there was  any air in here yeah and it was just like rarest   of the lost ark bob pieced together the tunnel's  probable location through a newspaper article from   1911 and a map from 1868 he found himself crawling  in a dirt-filled tunnel beneath brooklyn streets   so he and some friends cleared out a hundred cubic  yards of dirt by hand bob believed the only thing   standing between him and the tunnel was a concrete  wall so he set up to blast away the last obstacle   wow so you had to blast out this hole here yeah  the th was the casting was there but it was   plugged in with bricks and cobblestones that were  cemented in all right oh man that's pretty big   this is cool you know this is huge oh yeah it  just keeps going whoa now you can see how big it   actually is the new york subway system officially  started in 1904 but this tunnel was its dry run   60 years earlier at half a mile long it was the  end of the line for the long island railroad at   the east river but because of the train cars  poor brakes and the dangerous traffic up above   the tunnel had nowhere to go but underground  this is brand new technology right this time   right they had no subway yet right even in london  they had no subway this is way before everything   way before this was innovation what they basically  did is they took elements of the 19th century   industrial revolution and combined it with roman  civil engineering techniques because the romans   built things similar to this for highway  underpasses two thousand years ago all   right two thousand year old roman engineering met  the industrial revolution in a method called cut   and cover instead of mining a tunnel under  new york workers were hired to rip out the   street with picks and shovels once they had dug  a ditch 34 by 32 feet and a half mile long they   brought in strong manhattan bedrock for the  walls six and a half feet thick at the bottom   tapering to four and a half feet thick at the top  finally a brick arched ceiling was put in place   and the streak was relayed over it today the  construction is so strong the brick's strength not   only supports the streets cars and trucks above  it could hold six times that and not collapse   how do you build a tunnel like this before  they've ever done this well you need to have   the right people involved first we had cornelius  vanderbilt who was in charge of the construction   right then you had a crew of 900 irish laborers  which were more effective than steam shovels   and of course they couldn't do anything in new  york state without the freemasons back then they   ran everything the secret of free masons have  long been linked to the founding of our country   george washington and ben franklin were  both masons from military forts to federal   buildings even the design of our nation's capital  freemasons controlled the planning and building of   our nation's infrastructure in fact new york's  governor in the early 1800s dewitt clinton was   a grand master of the freemasons and he was  influential in starting projects like the erie   canal and new york's board of education top new  york city officials and engineers were also masons   and they played an important role in getting  this groundbreaking project to become reality   for example the person who took over the  federalist party and the freemasons after   deway clinton died was rufus king who was a signer  to the u.s constitution his son john a king was   the person who got the idea to build a long  island railroad to connect new york with boston   in 1859 corruption brought the whole project  down a greedy real estate developer had the   tunnel declared a public nuisance which allowed  him to collect money from surrounding landowners   to pay for its demolition but instead of  destroying it he simply put up two walls   one at each end pocketing the rest of the money  nearly 130 000 the equivalent of 3 million today   so where we came in that filled in part  that's where he plugged up that end   correct and behind here is where he plugged  up this end correct so i'm holding i'm pushing   on new york city real estate corruption right  here you got it right in the palm of your hand   for 150 years it was the breeding  ground for all sorts of scandalous tales   the tunnel was supposedly the headquarters of  a whiskey bootlegger at the turn of the century   and a dumping ground for murder incorporated  the infamous new york mafia in the 1920s   we found some smashed up five-gallon whiskey jugs  and a piece of pottery that said daniel cavanaugh   liquor dealer 20 atlantic streets really i looked  him up in the old city records and he had a liquor   store at the mouth of the tunnel near columbia  street so he's brewing his stuff down here   but the biggest mystery has yet to be solved  behind this second wall is the tunnel's old   train platform a platform bob believes holds  an abandoned locomotive that may contain an   assassin's secret after john wilkes booth shot  president lincoln he was hunted down and killed   investigators found his diary on his dead  body in may 1865 a conspiracy trial was held   but booth's diary was conspicuously absent it  was later rediscovered in a war department file   only 18 pages were mysteriously missing so you  go past here right 200 feet what do you find a   station platform from 1844. no way yeah they  found a portal area mad of marble and granite   and there's probably a steam locomotive buried  back there you have proof of this oh yeah the same   documentation that i used to find the tunnel says  they left the locomotive back there it suggested   that the missing pages of booth's diary were  hidden in a tunnel near an abandoned locomotive   the long forgotten train car under atlantic  avenue would have been the perfect location   bootleggers prohibition murder incorporated  all kinds of nefarious dealings this is   subterranean new york really this rubble is the  building blocks of new york this whole tunnel   of the freemasons the proof of  their involvement in creating   our biggest city never mind our whole  country they could get together create   something that had never been tried before a  subway underneath the streets of new york and   this is what goes on to inspire bigger and  better and greater projects down the road   new york city has 722 miles of subway track over  6 374 miles of streets and 6400 miles of sidewalks millions of immigrants have made new york  the city it is today but in the early days   immigrants had it rough and they had to  fight for supremacy on every street corner   so they formed separate neighborhoods all crammed  in the middle of the big apple you had the irish   in five points the italians in little italy and  down in chinatown two of the most dangerous gangs   of all they all fought for turf by waging bloody  battles in the streets and in the underground   located on the lower east side of manhattan  chinatown covers two square miles but is home to   over 100 000 people starting in the 1870s the area  was a safe haven for persecuted chinese immigrants   until gang wars turned it into one of the most  dangerous neighborhoods in new york's history   art zuckerman is an expert on chinatown and took  me into its dark underworld i'm good welcome   to chinatown thank you so this is right this is  dead center chinatown this is well this is really   old chinatown this is as old as you're gonna get  oh okay chinatown has expanded dramatically but   this is really the oldest part of chinatown  and you can imagine going back to the 1870s   to early 1900s there were opium dents here there  were gambling casinos there was prostitution there   was incredible amount of things all that a lot of  that was underground here well it is underground   because they really had to be hidden from the  police in the late 1800s chinatown was a haven   for businesses of vice and a center of power  for chinese gangs at the time the chinese were   emigrating to the u.s in large numbers over  70 percent of the workforce that built the   transcontinental railroad were chinese but they  were treated as little more than slaves with no   legal rights and were the targets of brutal racist  attacks there were massacres in the west coast   where chinese were being killed and then they  had no laws they had no rights whatsoever so they   started coming to a city that was an immigrant  city like the irish in hell's kitchen and the   italians in little italy the chinese banded  together in small communities they formed   their own associations and secret societies and  developed a self-reliant underground economy but   the social clubs where these outsiders gathered  were also fronts for powerful gangs known as tongs   the tongs were the american version of a much  older secret society in china known as the triad   society the triads were formed in the 1600s  to overthrow the ruling dynasties in china   they were rebels and well-trained militants  when they arrived in new york and regrouped   they turned into gang lords extorting  protection money and running seedy businesses   by 1900 the two most powerful tongs on liang and  hip sing were locked in constant bloody battles   for control of chinatown's profitable vices  gambling opium and prostitution but probably   the main thing that they fought with hatchets  guns were expensive but hatchets weren't okay   that's why you know you got these really  cleavers this is bloody when they cut your   fingers off and things like this just it was  really a very traditional kind of violent area   the most dangerous part of chinatown was known  as the bloody angle it was named that because   where deuter street curves was a hot spot  for chinese gangs to fight their turf wars   the reason the street was so popular is  because if you're in a gang war yeah and   you want every advantage you can get you're gonna  hide behind nooks and crannies i could go in here   and hide in this corner sure and all of a sudden  someone's coming out over here and you wouldn't   see me yeah and i can jump out and that's why  this labyrinth of networks of highways below   the ground level and the tunnels were so  great okay because the surprise element   you could really attack people so you're  saying underneath this street there are   tunnels it's amazing literally amazing  in addition to alleys and doorways   chinese gangs used an elaborate underground  maze of tunnels and manholes to launch surprise   attacks and to disappear when the police tried  to stop them even today the people here keep   a tight lid on their underground and many of  the tunnels remain blocked off so this is it   here yeah this is it this is the chinatown  tunnel see where all the gangs used to meet people so if what would it have looked like at that  time well it'd probably be a lot seedier wooden   uh dark maybe kerosene lamps over here okay  so really pretty pretty uh treacherous looking   so this has been all refitted to a modern use now  but all these doors and everything i mean suggest   that there's more tunnels around here oh there is  behind every door here there's a whole labyrinth   of tunnels that go in here today this is the wing  fat shopping arcade but in 1900 it was the home   turf of the hip sing tong and their leader mock  duck who wore chain mail armor and always carried   loaded guns and a cleaver he would shoot these  guns and discriminate actually close his eyes to   do this and then discriminate just keeps rolling  around and doing this thing and very often he   would do that in and on on the bloody angle he  would come down here after he shot these people   and this is his escape mock duck's escape tunnel  was originally a beer storage area for an 18th   century brewery as chinatown grew up the tunnel  came back into use connecting chatham square with   one of the social centers of the day the opera  house performers used it to leave the theater   and so did the town remember the opera was for  everybody and sometimes they would mix in public   you know the tongue groups and all of a sudden  they must have gone into some sort of disagreement   in august 1905 and all of a sudden in the middle  of this the theater gunshots that are ringing   out here all over the place four people got killed  when the smoke cleared there were four dead bodies   with the police on their way tong members lugged  the corpses into the opera basement and through   the tunnel police didn't want to go down here  either sure because there was a lot of stuff going   on here down there and they go to chatham square  and then they drag the bodies right through the   bodies right through here and escaped on the other  end the tongue war raged on for years in 1909   50 men were killed in just one gun battle in the  bloody angle even today gangs with names like the   flying dragons and ghost shadows fight for control  of this small patch of land and its underworld   if you were down here and these are the  tunnels you would be able to ambush from   these nooks and crannies anybody coming  down here wouldn't stand a chance against   chinese hatchet men waiting in the dark no  we're not that far away from that time 150   years in the big scope doesn't really mean much  this is only only refitted recently so this is   all still the tunnel basement today  tunnel just a few generations ago gennaro lombardi opened the first  u.s pizzeria in 1895 in new york   today americans consume  nearly 350 slices per second new york has always been pushed to new heights  by secret societies and clandestine organizations   operating behind the scenes and there's no group  more secretive or more powerful than the us   military one of the army's greatest contributions  to new york was a strategic fort and underground   network that once protected the city's vital  waterways but is now almost forgotten new york   is filled with little secrets but few people know  about the not so little secret called fort totten   its design and the innovative weaponry used  there protected our nation's biggest city for   over 150 years and i'm meeting sergeant john  mccoy who's going to show me how this was done   you know how many battles have taken  place on the doorstep of america's largest   city new york harbor was the site of  major battles in the revolutionary war   the spanish-american war even world war ii  when nazi u-boats sunk over 1 000 ships here   killing thousands of americans and then the entire  world was shocked on september 11 2001 when new   york's twin towers were struck at the tip of the  harbor taking the lives of three thousand people   for over a hundred years enemy forces believed  they could move right into new york harbor with   little or no resistance but with a design put in  place by military leaders during the civil war   the harbor forts have been able to keep any  boat from ever getting too close to the city   and fort totten has been right at the front lines  i got special permission to explore fort totten's   underbelly welcome to fort taunton thank you park  ranger john mccoy was going to take me through it   fort totten is perfectly positioned to  guard manhattan from an ocean assault   it was built on one side of a narrow channel where  the east river spills into the long island sound   and less than a mile across the water from another  stronghold fort schuyler together they created a   two-pronged defense system for one of the city's  most vulnerable points the whole lower east and   west side of manhattan was ports so it was  in a way sort of like a heart of shipping   so i mean new york is vulnerable america  is vulnerable exactly built in 1862 as the   civil war was heating up fort totten had high  lookout points cannons and soldiers at the ready   for confederate gunboats but when a new enemy  and a new war surfaced 30 years later the two   forts developed a hidden subterranean weapon in  order to save new york the army not only went   underground they went underwater planting a series  of underwater mines in the riverbed between them   these mines also called buoyant torpedoes  were first placed in the 1890s during the   spanish-american war arranged in a grid they were  weighted down by anchors so they couldn't be seen   but these weren't the self-explosive modern mines  of today these weapons needed to be activated   by the soldiers in the fort the mines were all  connected to a distribution box in the water and   then back to the fort via a long submarine cable  if a soldier saw an enemy vessel approaching he   could activate the specific mine that was closest  to the ship leaving the others intact in case of   further assault so it wasn't the the ship hitting  the mine that that detonated it was somebody   actually triggering a switch yes i never knew  that but fort totten had more than an underwater   minefield at its disposal the fort itself was  originally designed to hold an arsenal to protect   new york during the civil war but as weaponry  evolved from 19th century cannonballs to heavier   artillery in world war ii the design of totten  still worked for hiding highly explosive munitions   wow look at this old door old wall wasn't just  too much prison cell yeah on the chamber next   to us the same arches here which leads me to  believe that they were connected at one point   fort totten is spread over 49 acres and  consists of 70 rooms including weapon   magazines holding cells and bunkers  because it was dug below sea level   water constantly seeps into the fort  creating a damp and eerie atmosphere   god look how thick the walls are yeah they had  to have to be strong right just to prevent any   explosion that would have happened now this is  the larger chamber this chamber is 81 feet long   and it's 22 feet wide that's pretty wild i think  we're underneath the ground here these chambers   were made out of solid granite and they needed to  be to protect the live explosives stored inside   but this civil war super bunker isn't fort  totten's only buried secret for generations there   has been a rumor about a tunnel connecting to fort  skylar under long island sound just follow me this   way watch your step so yeah it's weird that these  this tunnel is high enough for us to stand in   so they meant people to come in here this  passageway may be an entrance to the rumored   tunnel if it is it would be a stroke of tactical  genius today there are 13 tunnels under the east   river alone and eight bridges over it but before  1883 when the brooklyn bridge first opened   the only way to get across or communicate  with the other side was by boat this tunnel   would have provided a hidden and direct  path between fort totten and fort schuyler   it gets kind of gnarly right here very  muddy very gross think about this i mean   we're inside and below a fort that was modern  in 1863 and a complete mystery of a tunnel all right this is where it really starts to get  treacherous and low i don't think anybody's gone   past this point but we can go a little bit  further can't really get any further down   here but you can imagine and it's likely that  this goes onward and quite possibly underneath   the harbor connecting this fort fort totten with  fort schuyler across the way i mean think about it   19th century military they didn't have the kind  of communication devices we have today obviously   so how useful how strategic would it have been  to have an actual tunnel connecting them and   they could have done it right under the harbor  moving men and supplies armaments who knows what   between these two sister forts so they could  work together the tunnel has since collapsed   buried under the harbor forever fort totten's  designs were ahead of their time secrets   that helped keep america's largest city safe  from enemies over a span of nearly 150 years   and those military secrets continue to be buried  somewhere deep in new york's underworld new york   was built on a foundation of secrets tunnels  used to fight bloody turf wars a groundbreaking   subway tunnel a speakeasy that defied both feds  and mobsters and a dedicated fraternity that   literally gave their lives taming the underground  every day new york owes its rise to greatness to   sites unseen and groups unheard societies that are  willing to build the city up by going underground you

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 3,066,221

Rating: 4.8254061 out of 5

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, cities of the underworld, history cities of the underworld, cities of the underworld show, cities of the underworld full episodes, cities of the underworld clips, full episodes, Cities of the Underworld s2 e9, Cities of the Underworld se2, Cities of the Underworld season 2 episode 9, Cities of the Underworld se2 ep9, Cities of the Underworld 2X9, Season 2, New York's Underground Societies, Secret Societies

Id: Uc344Z7peS8

Length: 42min 59sec (2579 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/4pegs]

Damn it’s location locked