Men, mains and alligators; the amazing world underneath New York, an always dramatic and sometimes unbelieveable world seen by very few people and taken for granted by the millions who walk about overhead A world of visionaries and charlatans, of inventors and outright thieves. Here is Alfred Eli Beach who in 1870 in total secrecy built a marvelous pneumatic subway; And Teddy May, superintendent of sewers, whose word was never questioned, neither when he testified in court nor when he told off his superiors as idiots; and Smelly Kelly, the subway sniffer who patrolled the tracks led by his formidable nose. And the fantastic technical accomplishments: the first subways, the first clean water running through mains, the wires and steam pipes, the great triumphs and the inevitable tragedies.