The Cable Building was originally the headquarters and power station for the Metropolitan Traction Company, one of the city's cable car companies. In all MTC spent $12 million on a cable car railway system to move cars on Broadway from Bowling Green to 36th Street. It was the most expensive system on a per-mile basis of any in the nation. When it became operational in the summer of 1893, its fleet comprised 125 cable cars and served 100,000 daily passengers. This was the central power station; other stations were at 51st Street and Front Street. The building's basement, which had been excavated 46' under the street surface, housed four 32-foot winding wheels that carried the cables that pulled the cable streetcars. The upper seven floors contained offices arranged around a large internal court with two rectangular light wells. Less than ten years after it was finished and occupied, cable traction became obsolete in 1901 and the company switched to electricity, but the building retained its original name. The last Broadway cable car left the Battery Station at 8:27 PM on May 21, 1901. Its final journey marked the end of cable street transportation in New York City. Subsequently, the Metropolitan Traction Company went into receivership, and was reorganized the following year as the New York Railways Company.
