JULY/AUGUST 2019. DISCOVER 65
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New York: The Steam City
In New York and other large cities around the
world, steam does more than just generate
electricity in power plants: It’s also piped directly
into buildings for heating, cooling and other
uses. Manhattan’s steam service started in 1881,
when the 225-foot-tall chimney of the NY Steam
Corporation’s single power plant was the second-
tallest structure in Manhattan, after the spire of
Trinity Church. Now, more than 100 miles of steam
pipes lie 5 to 8 feet beneath the pavement in New
York, just above the subway tunnels, embedded
in concrete to protect them from accidental
construction damage.
“We estimate between 2.5 and 3 million people
are affected by the steam system,” says Frank
Cuomo, the general manager for steam distribution
at Con Edison in New York — that’s about a third of
the city’s official population. He reels off the names
of some of Con Ed’s steam-heating customers, a
list that includes many of the most storied pieces of
real estate in the world: Grand Central Station, the
Empire State Building, the new World Trade Center
complex and the 9/11 memorial’s twin reflecting
pools. “The pools are also heated by steam to
make sure they run throughout the winter without
freezing up,” says Cuomo.
Con Edison currently has five power plants in the
city that use natural gas to boil more than a million
gallons of water every hour at peak times. Without
steam power, the city’s iconic skyline would
look very different. “Every building would have a
chimney stack because they would need their own
internal combustion-type boiler,” says Michael
Brown, the plant manager at Con Edison’s East
River Generating Station. “You’d have smokestacks
like the industrial revolution in London.”
Beecher’s Handmade
Cheese in the Flat Iron
district of Manhattan uses
steam to heat its curds.The Guggenheim Museum
and the American Museum
of Natural History use
steam heat to regulate the
humidity in their many
spacious galleries.The strikingly
slender footprint of
432 Park Avenue is
possible because
it doesn’t need its
own bulky heating
system on its
lower level.Steam sterilizes
hundreds of
surgical trays
every day at
Memorial Sloan
Kettering.Just one power plant in Manhattan’s East
Village provides about half of the city’s
steam. Four of the nine boilers in the plant
are enormous — about 10 stories tall. The
facility is in a flood zone, and it was badly
damaged during Superstorm Sandy, so critical
equipment has since been elevated.