On February 26, 1870, the elite of New York stepped into the basement of Devlin’s clothing store in Tribeca and descended into a secret, unauthorized tunnel — one City Hall hadn’t approved and, by all accounts, hadn’t even been briefed on.

The evening was hosted by Alfred Ely Beach, a New York inventor with a showman’s touch. He designed the lavish “Under Broadway Reception” not just to unveil his clandestine pneumatic tunnel, but to dazzle the city’s tastemakers and power brokers alike. 7

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“Beach spared no expense to impress the public,” writes Matthew Algeo in “New York’s Secret Subway: The Underground Genius of Alfred Beach and the Origins of Mass Transit” (Island Press, out now). “He furnished the waiting room with a grand piano, chandeliers, and a water fountain stocked with

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