The Waterside Stations
For some time the need of a central generating plant had been apparent to all familiar with the company’s facilities and prospects. Already during the summer of 1898 an engineering commission had visited all the chief electrical stations of Europe and consulted the best-known experts of the industry, and in 1902 the first waterside station in New York was opened upon a site bordering the East River between Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Streets. The new operating room contained sixteen vertical engines with a capacity each of over 5,000 horse-power. From these current was generated by 3,500 kilowatt generators and sent out to the various distributing centers.
As a very natural consequence of such development, the company by 1902 had 420 miles of underground system supplying installation amounting to 1,928,090 fifty-watt equivalents.