Reliquary

For obvious reasons, no reliable census of Manhattan’s underground population exists. However, the Rushing-Bunten study of 1994 indicates that 2,750 persons live in just the small area bordered by Penn Station on the southwest and Grand Central Terminal on the northeast, with the population rising to 4,500 during the winter months. In this writer’s experience, such a number seems conservative.

Similarly, there is no accurate record of the births and deaths that take place in the communities beneath New York. However, given the disproportionate number of drug abusers, criminals, ex-convicts, mentally handicapped, and mentally unstable people who gravitate to the world below the surface, it is clear that the environment can be an extremely difficult and dangerous one. People have given many reasons for retreating from society into the darkness of the railroad tunnels and other subterranean spaces: privacy, security, a deep alienation from society. It has been estimated that, once a person goes underground, the average life expectancy is approximately twenty-two months.

L. Hayward, Caste and Society Beneath Manhattan

(forthcoming)