Like every other major metropolis, New York City has tunnels for people, tunnels for cars, and lots of tunnels for trains. But it also has something rather more unique: tunnels for cows. Or does it? This is the story of New York’s lost, forgotten, or perhaps just mythical subterranean meat infrastructure.
The first time I came across a mention of the city’s cow tunnel(s) was in Raising Steaks, historian Betty Fussell’s study of beef and its role in American culture. The underground structure (or structures, depending on whose version of the story you believe) was supposedly built at the end of the nineteenth century: an infrastructural response to the cow-jams that had begun to block streets in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan. (The increased quantity of cattle arriving in the city was due, in part, to another infrastructural innovation: the railway.)
via Gizmodo
Opening Photo Credit: Shutterstock / Tim Wang / Nbriam.
