Ooh. I know this one. Parts of NYC still use a steam heating system that was first designed in the late 1800's:
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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It’s not steam. It’s smoke from wood fired pizza ovens for the turtle men that live there. There was a cartoon documentary about them on tv a few years back.
I never thought of them eating artisan pizzas. I always figured they’d get some shitty dominos.
Ew, gross. They live in a sewer, but they're not animals.
They're teenagers, taste doesn't factor in much after cost and availability.
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The New York City steam system includes Con Edison's Steam Operations, a piped steam system which provides steam to large parts of Manhattan. Other smaller systems provide steam to New York University and Columbia University, and many individual buildings in New York City also have their own steam systems. The steam is used to heat and cool buildings and for cleaning and disinfecting. It is the largest such system in the world and has been in operation since 1882.
Wow, that was quite a read, thanks. Amazing technology
Amazing for the 1800s
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A new rat pope was elected.
I love how plausible this is
That's just from the ruins of Old New York that New York is built on top of. The mutants down there are a steampunk society.
Old steam heating system. They vent it when they’re working on a section.
Side-note: surprised by all the fellow New Yorkers i’m seeing in this thread. I thought yous were still at the other place.
Yep. Detroit has this, too.
Yeah it’s common enough I figured most knew, but a few years ago I went ice skating at the bryant park rink with someone who refused to walk anywhere near the steam. They thought it was toxic and didn’t accept my explanation, so we had to walk an extra few blocks to get around the steam work. Shrug
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Steam from the steamed hams we're having
And you call them that even though they are obviously grilled?
excuse me for a minute
New sewer pope
Believe it or not. Very old infrastructure in the city. Still runs on steam power.
I swear I thought this answer was about as accurate as the one that said "dragons".
How steampunk for probably the largest city in the world to use steam in this day and age? I love it...
I’m going to have to interject, NYC is the 11th [or 35th] largest city.
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Some big cities originally heated their buildings by producing steam in one one centralized building and delivering it to large buildings thru pipes underground. The steam you see is from leaking pipes in this antiquated infrastructure. It's a very inefficient method if you ask me. Cities should offer these buildings low interest loans so they can update and be independent but they never take my advice
Afaik it's not inefficient if the heating is done via fossil fuels as big furnaces (especially in the past, especially turbo-fan super-fine grind coal ones) are much more efficient than smol ones for individual buildings (even if the buildings are giant).
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District level heating is actually pretty efficient, some universities do the same thing on purpose to save on bills. Our relatively young city does it with the downtown skyscrapers for the same reason.
The other nice thing is that when you upgrade the heating system to be less carbon intensive, you can instantly have a ton of buildings all jump instantly to fewer emissions too.
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The tubes are there to raise minor steam leaks above street level so they don't hinder visibility.
Another interesting underground quirk we have is our pneumatic tube mail system.
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That's the steam from the melting pot
That isn't steam, it's smoke. Smoke from the smoked hams we're having. Mmmm, smoked hams.
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Teenage mutant ninja turtles barbeque
You know how when rockets take off in Florida there's lots of smoke?
Yeah there's a tunnel that goes from Florida to New York that the smoke goes through to help heat up the New York streets. So anytime you see smoke in New York it's cause a rocket was recently shot up in Florida. ~~Technology~~ Infrastructure is incredible!
There’s a lot of things under the streets of New York, many of them cause heat. In order to cool them off the heat is vented outside and the warm moist air meets with the cool dry air and condensates into droplets that we see as steam. Same affect as breathing out on a cold day, you’re not creating steam but it looks that way because the warm moist air from your breath is condensing in the cool dry air.
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Hundred plus year old infrastructure.
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