When we urbanize a place and it thrives and the streetscape becomes overcrowded, the future to some extent must go beneath us. During New York City’s greatest growth, from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s, new infrastructure was plentiful. Much of it was above ground—elevated trains, highways, bridges—but increasingly more of it went underground: water and sewer systems, rail lines and tunnels, complex webs of gas, electric, steam, and communication cables, pipes and conduit.

The city’s population peaked at eight million in 1950; since then it dropped and only recently has inched over the mid-20th century high. Six decades of minimal population growth also meant limited new public works. If the city adds another million people by 2025, as projected, new infrastructure is needed to modernize the systems that serve us.

The eight projects in this exhibit comprise New York’s greatest infrastructure advancements in generations. The water projects will protect the city’s famous water supply. The transportation projects will profoundly transform how people move to, from, and around the city, alleviating crowds, modernizing facilities, spurring new development.

These infrastructure projects evoke controversy. Major undertakings generally do.  In 1832, New York’s first substantial underground infrastructure, the Croton Aqueduct, was marked by lawsuits, engineering disputes, public protest, and predictions of failure and financial ruin. Efforts to create New York’s first subway began three years after the Civil War in 1868; New Yorkers took their first subway ride in 1904.

These infrastructure projects are expensive. When New York dug its first  public wells 330 years ago, residents paid for them by direct assessment or, if they balked, by forced sale of their possessions. New York’s first subways were built by private companies. Financing and construction of today’s urban infrastructure is far more complex. Thickets of government regulation that make projects safe and secure and protect historic and environmental resources also raise costs and extend deadlines.

These infrastructure projects differ from how they were first conceived, some decades ago. Some have changed even during the months of planning for this exhibit. No matter. As the American humorist O. Henry said of New York a century ago, “It’ll be a great place if they ever finish it.”

The Future Beneath Us is displayed in two locations.  Visit the New York Transit Museum’s Gallery Annex and Store at Grand Central Terminal, in the Shuttle passage, for more on New York’s future and The New York Public Library’s Science Industry and Business Library at 188 Madison Avenue at 34th Street for more on New York’s future.