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The Port Authority Trans-Hudson Railroad, or the PATH train, is NYC’s “other” subway, running under 6th Avenue, Christopher Street, Greenwich Street and Morton Street and from Church Street on the once and future World Trade Center site to various stops in Hoboken, Jersey City, and Newark, New Jersey. At its full length, it runs from [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Greenwich Village Manhattan
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 In early April 2012 I walked the route of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway, or the closest possible approximation along the tracks, from the Bronx Park East station all the way northeast to Dyre Avenue. It gave me a chance to traverse the Pelham Gardens and Eastchester sections of [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester
There’s a New England undercurrent running through the Bronx. The New York Yankees’ rivalry with the Boston Red Sox began when the Sox’ owner Harry Frazee sold his pitching and slugging star, Babe Ruth, to the Yankees before the 1920 season, and the subsequent championship tally, 27 to 2 in favor of the Yanks, has [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester Pelham Parkway Unionport
In 2003 I did a series of photographs for a page on the BMT Chambers Street station, the original southern terminal of what is today the J train that runs from Broad Street to Jamaica via the Williamsburg Bridge. However, what had been an important terminal experienced a change in fortunes when tracks were extended [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Midwood
If you’re unfamilar with the INDependent subway, IND stations are instantly recognizable in contrast to BMT and IRT stations, which were built earlier. In fact, I’m beginning to hear from people who no longer know the old subway divisions, which is understandable since the subways have, since 1940, been consolidated in the same system — which [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Brooklyn Heights
One of my favorite developments in the ongoing renovations in NYC subway stations is the stained glass artwork that has been installed on elevated station windscreens. I consider the #7 Flushing Line branch my local line (along with the 7th Avenue Line trains, #1,2,3) and 8th Avenue Line trains (A, C, E) I board at [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Queens Sunnyside
Southern Brooklyn stations in Midwood and Sheepshead Bay on the BMT Brighton line have all been rehabilitated with new windscreens and lighting, as well as a spruce-up of fare control areas — a lengthy process that took the better part of 3 years. I was passing through Sheepshead Bay and caught a train back home [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Sheepshead Bay
Subway mosaics, most of them fashioned between 1904 and 1928, sometimes depict scenes that were long vanished even before the stations in which they are displayed were built. There’s this one, at the Chambers Street 7th Avenue IRT station, where the #1, 2 and 3 stop. Mosaic plaques against the wall in the express station [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains
This is the last, or at least among the last, Lawrence Street signs on the BMT platform I’ve always known as Lawrence Street. The station name was wiped from the MTA subway maps last year, when a connection to the IND A/C/F trains at the Jay Street/Metrotech station was opened. (And that station had for [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Downtown Brooklyn
Word came to my unbelieving ears that some younger viewers of the Grammy Awards ceremony in February 2012 were stumped when the sprightly figure of Paul McCartney appeared on their television screens. Never before had they been forced to deal with anyone quite this old, and never having heard of the Beatles or pop rock [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan Penn Station
The Swingin’ 60s were a fun time to grow up in Brooklyn, especially for kids like me, with a perplexing penchant for noticing changes in lampposts as well as subway signage. One day in 1962, the whole neighborhood’s 1920s-era Corvingtons had been hauled away and slot-shafted, curved neck Donald Deskey posts appeared. Likewise, in 1969 [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains
This railroad station was taken out of service about 30 years ago. The handsome brick building with the arched windows on the right was built in the 1850s for one of Samuel Lord’s daughters — Lord of Lord & Taylor fame. After being alllowed to deteriorate into the worst sort of decrepitude, it was torn [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains
I had missed this one until now — a plaque at the 157th Street station on the 7th Avenue-Broadway line, likely installed as the station opened in 1904, directs visitors to the Morris-Jumel Mansion, a colonial-era private home that George Washington used as a headquarters during the Revolution. From the ForgottenBook: This oldest private home [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan Washington Heights
The picture windows of the Cortelyou Road station window are placed directly over the tracks, which used to be part of asteam railroad conecting Prospect Park and Coney Island. Through it, we see “DRUGS” and “SODA” signs, which are a small part of a large painted sign on the side of the old GREENFIELD THE [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Ditmas Park
December 2011: It happens every Christmas. A giant conifer is sacrificed for the Rockefeller Center tree-lighting featuring the pop teen of the moment; trampling crowds worshiping the God of Commerce; Bing and Fred on TV and Bing and Bowie on Youtube. Also accompanying the fanfare is the annual running of the classic subway cars on [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: 6th Avenue Manhattan
In the 1940s and into the 1960s, a series of hand drawn, light hearted signs depicting proper subway etiquette appeared in the ad strips in the subway cars, usually under the “Subway Sun” banner, all of them drawn by an artist named Amelia Opdyke “Oppy” Jones. I’ll have more of these signs on a future page. [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains
A head-scratcher at the 65th Street station on the IND Queens Boulevard line (R and M trains) has a modern sign showing the exit at Rowan Street and Broadway. 65th Street hasn’t been known by that name since the 1920s, when most Queens streets were grouped under one numbering system. Early IND signs, installed in [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Signs Subways & Trains
I took this photo on Montague and Clinton Streets in Brooklyn Heights, where a quartet of old-style subway entrance lamps have been preserved (or, as I suspect, made new to match the old styles). At one time all subway staircase entrances carried lamps like this, with the BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit) marked with green and Interborough [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains
The removal of a newsstand at West 3rd Street and 6th Avenue has revealed the presence of an old-style enamel sign attached to a stairway rail. Signs of this type were once prevalent in the subways before the current Unimark white on black signs appeared in the late 1960s. The Unimark syle gradually spread throughout [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
My interest in subway mosaics has been re-fired again, as it is every few years. I have a new admiration for the intricate mosaics that were assembled on station walls and signage in the subways between about 1914 and 1928 (after the initial Beaux Arts terra cotta and mosaics done in original IRT stations from [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Hunters Point Queens
Many visitors to the DUMBO, Brooklyn area mistake the numerous tracks found in the Belgian-blocked streets for old trolley tracks. However, since until a few years ago DUMBO was almost entirely given over to warehousing and manufacturing (except for the small Vinegar Hill neighborhood on the eastern end) trolley lines never troubled it north of [...]
Categorized in: One Shots Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn DUMBO
New York City opened up a second section of its only major rail to trails project, the former West Side Freight Railroad (popularly called the High Line) in June 2011 from West 20th to West 30th Street, leaving only a short section from West 30th to West 34th undeveloped. The city does hope to open that remaining section [...]
Categorized in: Street Scenes Subways & Trains Walks Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan Railroads
The Forgotten NY Book of Street Necrology is a thick, dusty, ancient tome, encrusted with the grime of centuries, its lock rusting and the last flecks of gilt flaking off the bindery. Unlike the recent flimsy editions of the AIA Guide to New York City (whose pages separate from the glue binding soon after first [...]
Categorized in: Signs Street Necrology Subways & Trains Tagged with: Astoria Hunters Point Queens Rockaway Sunnyside
I was slowly and furtively making my way on a looping route from Bartel-Pritchard Square (really a traffic roundabout) at the western end of Prospect Park south and southwest to Borough Park, when the shoes started to pinch too much at last (I don’t like the way conventional sneakers look, so I always buy black sneakers [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Borough Park Brooklyn
The West Side Freight Elevated, colloquially known as the High Line (shouldn’t all elevated trains be High Lines?) has seen its share of coverage in Forgotten New York, from 1999, when the Giuliani administration wanted to tear it down, through the preparation period after Friends of the High Line secured enough money and high-powered support to preserve it, and [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Greenwich Village Manhattan
After recently stumbling (or was I pushed?) off the J train at Marcy Avenue, the first stop in Brooklyn, I walked up and down the platform, snapping away at what met my gaze. There’s a panoply of Brooklyn architecture from the classic era visible from here, and in perfect weather, who could resist. In the mid-2000s most of [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Williamsburg
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 In 1977 a set of R16 cars with #6315 bringing up the rear during the Great Age of Graffiti displays a JJ sign. Note Franklin K. Lane High School at right, and a black on white enamel station sign. Until the Unimark system was adopted for subway signage, there were a hodgepodge of different styles [...]
By the end of June [2010] the V and W trains will be no more. As part of a broad-based budget cutting procedure, the millions-in-arrears MTA, getting little help from the state and federal government, now turns to you, the consumer of its services, and requires payment of higher fares and acceptance of stingier service. This [...]
At one time, railroad stations, especially terminals in large cities, were thought of as magnificent gateways or portals to new realms, welcoming travelers from far and wide to places they had only read about in books, or places of inspiration for commuters from far-off locales: though their work may be drudgery, they could aspire to something [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Downtown Brooklyn
I am fond of speculating about possibilities that I will never experience. In future centuries, if we don’t snuff ourselves, there is going to be quite the sightseeing market on those satellites that orbit the bigger planets in the solar system. Imagine the view of Jupiter, with its swirling clouds and red spot (you can drop [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Astoria Queens
My fascination with the NYC subway’s infrastructure continues unabated and my love affair with the subways remains unrequited. That is made clear every weekend, when the MTA runs most lines completely differently than it does during the week. The subways are now over 105 years old (some lines are, at least) and while the sensible notion [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Borough Hall Broad Channel Bronx Brooklyn Central Park Grand Concourse Inwood Kensington Manhattan Mott Haven Roosevelt Island Wanamaker’s Washington Heights
PHOTOS AND DESCRIPTIONS BY GARY FONVILLE, FNY corrrespondent There are many two- level stations in the NYC subway system. However, this is one where express trains are on one level and local ones are on the other: the Nostrand Avenue station at Fulton Street, Brooklyn. However: At Bergen Street on the ‘F’ the locals are on the upper [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Wall Street
While recuperating from heart surgery in June 2009 I was curious about the brand-new South Ferry station at the south end of the IRT #1 train — the first new station to open in NYC since 1989. Traveling downtown to see it I also remembered that I hadn’t seen the changes that had recently been made [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan South Ferry Wall Street
As most New Yorkers who have been here for the past 40 years or so know, most of our major projects that get proposed never see the light of day. The 2nd Avenue Subway is coming along very slowly, but has been planned for nearly 80 years. A perfectly manageable project to convert the James Farley Post Office [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea High Line Manhattan
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Approaching Brooklyn College Passing Glenwood Road (above left) and Utica Avenue (right) we passed some large tanks owned by Favorite Plastics, a manufacturer of polyethylene film. Glenwood Road, and Albemarle, Beverl(e)y, Clarendon, Dorchester and Farragut, were once lettered, but several decades ago real estate developers though they’d sound better with sophisticated, vaguely British monikers. [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Long Island RR NY & Atlantic RR Queens
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Long Island RR NY & Atlantic RR Queens
A recent topic thread in Subchat, the subway blog, made me revisit one of FNY’s long-cherished talismans, the remainders of the old Long Island Rail Road’s “Evergreen” branch, which was a one-track freight line that ceased operation, I believe, sometime in the 1980s. In the long ago and far away, it was a ctually a passenger line [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Queens Ridgewood
As of February 2009 the subways are almost 105 years old and even the “newest” parts are over sixty years old. In that amount of time, there are bound to be outdated signs to exits that don’t exist anymore or landmarks that have been torn down. Some of this was deliberately done: plaques in some of [...]
With little warning or fanfare, the MTA is about to shutter one of its most venerable stations to passenger traffic in just a couple weeks [as of December 2008], the South Ferry terminal, as it prepares to open a state of the art terminal with straight platforms, a center island, and a transfer to the nearby N/R BMT [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan plaques South Ferry
In September 2007 FNY, on the Lullaby of Broadway Slice, chronicled the impending demolition and restoration of the Broadway (Flushing) Long Island Rail Road station. Between 1993 (preceding that actually) and 2007, the MTA had allowed the station to become a horror show of crumbling platforms and fences as well as urine-soaked waiting sheds. Things got so bad [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Flushing Queens
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Trolleys Tagged with: Kew Gardens Park Slope
BY GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent The New York City subway system was planned with a lot of standardization. Standardization was very practical for subway planners and financial backers: if each station was custom designed, costs would have risen exponentially. As a result, wall tiles, entrances, support columns, construction techniques, lighting techniques and kiosks (for the [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan mosaics Prospect Park Queens
By GARY FONVILLE Forgotten NY correspondent FNY has highlighted trains and stations on the original IRT line. This time FNY will take a look at the most overlooked structures of the subway system. These edfices housed critical components of its power distribution system — the substations and the original power house on Manhattan’s west side. [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Manhattan
Downtown Brooklyn has a large, sprawling underground station, the Borough Hall-Court-Montague Street complex, consisting of three separate subway lines constructed at different times. There’s the venerable Borough Hall IRT station opened in May 1908, the very first subway station in Brooklyn; the other Borough Hall station, serving the IRT 7th Avenue line, opened in April 1919; [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Court Street
From the ForgottenBook: The New York Botanical Garden and New York Zoological Park (known to all as the Bronx Zoo) are the two main divisions of Bronx Park, which was acquired by the city (mostly from the Lorillard estate in the center of the Bronx) in late 1888 and early 1889. By 1891, the city had allocated fully 250 acres [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx model trains
October 4, 1969. The Mets beat the Atlanta Braves in Atlanta 9-5, beginning a ‘miraculous’ postseason run for the Amazin’s in which they won 7 of 8 games against the NL West Champion Braves and AL Champion Baltimore Orioles, winning the World Series. While the USA had put two astronauts on the moon in July, [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn elevated Myrtle Avenue
Despite abortive efforts, mostly in the 1920s and 30s, to connect the BMT subway from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the NYC subway has never penetrated Staten Island, which has its own commuter rail line, Staten Island Railway, formerly a division of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. That doesn’t mean, however, that Staten Island is bereft of subway cars. Since 1985, [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: restaurants Staten Island
One of the IRT’s “original 28″ stations constructed in 1904,Columbus Circle, has been a hodgepodge in appearance since the 1930s, when a transfer to the new IND running up Central Park West was instituted. For example, all the “Columbus Circle” terra cotta plaques ( seen above) were removed during the 1930s renovation. In addition, more than [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Columbus Circle
The Long Island Rail Road has been slowly doing restoration work on stations along the Port Washington branch, which runs a couple of blocks from your webmaster’s home in Little Neck. Work began in 1995 at Woodside, and since then some stations such as Auburndale have been completely replaced, while otehrs, like Bayside and Murray Hill, underwent [...]
Categorized in: Forgotten Slices Subways & Trains Tagged with: Broadway Long Island Rail Road
CONTINUED FROM PART 5 That Totten Town Tottenville can unofficially be called New York State’s southernmost town (officially, New York City is). British naval officer captain Christopher Billopp was its first European settler in 1678, and within a couple of years, had built a stone mansion at the foot of today’s Hylan Boulevard that would figure [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Tagged with: Staten Island Tottenville
CONTINUED FROM PART 4 Your webmaster made fitful forays into extreme southwestern Staten Island (the old town of Westfield) in the 1960s (I seem to remember a bus ride with my parents past endless fields of nothing (likely Arthur Kill Road, which still has a lot of empty stretches) and a two-lane roadway (that was probably [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Tagged with: Prince's Bay Richmond Valley Staten Island
CONTINUED FROM PART 3 Eltingville is the name of a neighborhood on Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City, USA. It is on the island’s South Shore, immediately to the south of Great Kills and north of Annadale. Originally called South Side, and later Seaside, the neighborhood owes its present name to [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Tagged with: Annadale Eltingville Huguenot Staten Island
Continued from Part 3 As Beatle Paul would often say, we’d like to carry on now with five more stations of Staten Island Rapid Transit, or Staten Island railway, as it’s called now, as it dawned on the MTA after all these years that it isn’t really all that rapid. Your webmaster has been fascinated with [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bay Terrace Great Kills Staten Island
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Saturday, January 27, 2007 – The Staten Island Railway cannot be called an official subway, even though it uses modified subway cars; it only travels through a short stretch of tunnel. It’s not a suburban railroad – Staten Island has been part of New York City since 1898. And it’s certainly not a rural railroad, though you’ll [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains
Got to admit that I’m a little bit confused… I set out to do a study of the stations of the Staten Island Railway, which I prefer to call its old name, Staten Island Rapid Transit (with 20-minute headways on the weekends, though, it’s not exactly rapid then.) To do this, I set about walking, in [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Clfton Grasmere St. George Stapleton Staten Island Tompkinsville
There’s an entire subculture of people who follow trains around or are fascinated by them. In England, they’re called “trainspotters” and here in NYC, there are a group of rabid fans that are known even among themselves as “foamers.” They know how to recognize every piece of “equipment” in the system. Your webmaster is not quite [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan Queens
I first stumbled on the “High Line,” or officially, the West Side Elevated Freight Railroad, way back in about 1983, when it had just run its last shipment of frozen turkeys and was marked for doom by its owner, Consolidated Rail Corporation, or Conrail. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Prior to the 1930s, 11th Avenue featured [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan
LIVING FOR THE CITY, PART 1 City Hall Park New York’s present City Hall was completed in 1811 and is the third City Hall overall. Though most of the surrounding park closest to City Hall itself was closed off to the public in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, the remainder actually has [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: City Hall IRT Manhattan
EVEN though I have chronicled NYC’s lost, magnificent City Hall Station a number of times in Forgotten NY I had only visited once before, in a 1998 Transit Museum tour that occurred before Mayor Rudy Giuliani closed (presciently, it must be admitted) the old station to touring, fearing terrorism. I just went back again (7/06) for [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: City Hall IRT Manhattan
Original 28, Part One Subway design reached its apotheosis in the original 28 subway stations, designed by architects George Heins and Christopher LaFarge, engineered and built by William Barclay Parsons and opened to the public on October 27, 1904. The original line ran from City Hall to 145th Street and is now a part of today’s [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan mosaics plaques
Like many things, the subways disappoint more often than not. The waits are too long, graffiti is creeping back again, the express won’t wait for passengers to cross the platform from the local, and token booth clerks, or rather station attendants, can bark more often than offer polite responses. A look at a 1967 report I [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan mosaics plaques
NOW HEAR THIS: the subway/MTA photo ban lives. Snapped a photo of a track indicator at Flatbush LIRR. With the renovations going on, these may soon vanish. Two cops rush over. One says, ‘tell me you didn’t just snap a photo.’ Demands camera, ID. Compels me to erase photo of track indicator and one of Morris [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: City Hall Low-V cars Manhattan
YOU’VE felt the heat already. New York City’s 722 miles of subways are among the dirtiest, hottest and most woebegone in the country. Other, newer systems are cleaner, cooler and run better. I notice decor a great deal, though, and… I still favor New York’s subway stations over others I have been in in Chicago, Philly [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: BMT Manhattan mosaics
ATTENTION has been paid, and rightly so, to the NYC subway system on its 100th anniversary in 2004, but there’s an even older transit system in New York existing alongside the subways,whose stations are neglected somewhat by the agency that’s in charge of running it. Truth be told, the 171-year-old (in 2005) Long Island Rail Road, [...]
Mid-1980s IRT retro-kiosk at Astor Place, ca. 1985 In New York City, just about every subway entrance on the system’s 460-plus stations is somehow different, and that’s no mean feat. There are standard templates that different subway companies in the early days, the IRT, BMT, and IND, followed, but they’ve been blurred over the years, so [...]
Fresh from its 1930 IND and Brooklyn elevated car fantrip to Rockaway Park, the MTA continued its centennial celebration on October 23, 2004 with a run of elevated and subway cars from four decades, on the Brighton Line in Brooklyn in what it referred to as the “Cavalcade of Stars.” The IRT low-V car No. 5292, straight outta [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Low-V cars vintage cars
As Ray Davies puts it on a song on the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society LP, People take pictures of each other Just to prove that they really existed I’d seen photos of the wooden elevated cars that ran on Brooklyn Rapid Transit and later, Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit, and I had even stood in them in the NYC Transit Museum. [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: elevated Queens Rockaway vintage cars
In proposing a ban on all photography by “unauthorized” personnel on its property, the MTA is citing safety precautions in the Age of Terror. However, I’ve long suspected the real reason is that the MTA wants to protect its properties. There’s money to be made as the MTA markets images of its collection of now-100-year-old mosaics, [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn IND Manhattan Queens
photo: Larry Fendrick. 1960s view at the barrel-vaulted Grand Central Terminal station, showing “future” redbirds. Already, vandals were marring the units The end of a 39-year run for R33 and R36 St. Louis Car Company units came on November 3, 2003 as the cars ran their final routes. They were affectionately dubbed “redbirds” for their maroon red [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan Queens Redbirds
AS MANY Forgotten fans know, what attracts me to the subway is its iconography and signage that preserve styles from decades past; look in any Forgotten NY subway page devoted to old signage, and you will see that the MTA has unwittingly left a museum under its nose; despite its best efforts to standardize things, [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: IRT Manhattan Postcards
NEW YORK CITY is not a railroading town, certainly not in the league of Chicago or Denver, for example. Goods get in and out of New York City mainly by truck, even though there are dreams of a rail freight tunnel crossing Upper New York Bay that would help to alleviate NYC’s crushing truck traffic. [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Elmhurst Glendale Queens Woodside
AS WE celebrate the 100th anniversary of the New York City subway in 2004, just think about what 100 years has meant for the sheer variety of architectural styles that are represented down below. Next time you take the mugger mover, consider that the subways were built by three different companies that were once in [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick IND IRT Long Island City Manhattan mosaics Park Slope Washington Heights Williamsburg
DESCEND with us now to a place far below the tumult and cacophony of the New York City subway system, a place where dripping water and the scuttling of rats are the only sound. They are the abandoned platforms that abut tracks that will never see revenue subway service alight again. There are several [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: 42nd Street IND Manhattan
R4 car from MTA’s Transit Museum at Prospect Park LUDDISM isn’t Forgotten-NY’s thing. We don’t indulge in nostalgia because, when it comes down to it, the past sucks, in many ways. No air conditioning, no vaccines, Jim Crow laws and women covering up down to their ankles at the beach. No, we don’t want to [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: BMT Brooklyn Franklin Shuttle IRT Manhattan Miss Subways vintage cars
BMT Chambers Street uptown platform, November 2003 That’s harsh, but the truth hurts sometimes. In many ways, the NYC subway system and the transportation network of which it is a part is set to make a renaissance in the next decade. A new Second Avenue Subway is supposed to break ground; expansions of the Flushing Line and [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chambers Street Manhattan
In the 1950s, despite the considerable charms of Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, Jane Russell and so many other voluptuous stars in film and magazines, it was decided in the architectural community that curves were definitely out. The United Nations Headquarters on 1st Avenue was built from 1947-1953 by an international team of architects that included Le Corbusier of France; at [...]
photo: Vincent Losinno The tracks of the Culver Shuttle await disposal at Cortelyou Road during demolition in August 1985 Fewer and fewer subway riders remember the Culver Shuttle, which ran between the 9th Avenue stop on the present W line, and the Ditmas Avenue stop, on the present F. The Shuttle ran between 1954 and [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Culver
THE END OF THE OLD STILLWELL AVENUE STATION LEFT: Inside the 1925 D-Type Triplex To celebrate ringing up Number 45 recently [those were he days!--2012] , Your Webmaster purchased a new G4 IMac, some new web software (which hopefully will result in a Forgotten revamp in the near future), an ice cream cake, and a ticket to [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: BMT Brooklyn Coney Island Stillwell Avenue
CONTINUED FROM PART 1 Auburndale This is possibly the final photograph taken of the “old” Auburndale station. Formerly an at-grade station, the line was placed on an embankment and elevated over 192nd Street in 1929. The station is undergoing a complete renovation including a new platform and waiting room. Auburndale was originally the Thomas Willets farm; [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Auburndale Bayside Douglaston Great Neck Little Neck Manhasset Nassau Plandome Port Washington Queens
The Port Washington Branch of the Long Island Railroad, your webmaster’s home railroad line, is a line capable of the finest the LIRR can offer and its very worst, with brand spanking new and restored station houses with all the amenities, and the highest railroad bridge on the Island. In 2002, I surveyed the line and [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Corona Elmhurst Flushing Woodside
In Queens, the Long Island Rail Road has certainly left remnants of its golden era of passenger trains. The Rockaway Branch is still there, waiting to be reactivated or converted into something worthwhile, and Kissena Corridor Park in Flushing traces the ancient LIRR connection from the main line through Creedmoor to the Port Washington branch (at about [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Tagged with: abandoned rail routes Hunters Point Queens Sunnyside
Imagine boarding the Long Island Railroad at Penn Station or Woodside and traveling east on the Port Washington Branch. After leaving the Shea Stadium platform, the train does notgo east past Main Street, Murray Hill, Broadway and the other stations of the branch, but rather veers northeast along the Flushing River; northwest near the old Flushing Airport; [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Tagged with: abandoned rail routes College Point Flushing Long Island RR Queens Whitestone
STATIONS OF THE N.Y.W.B (Dyre Avenue Line) Between East 180th Street and Dyre Avenue near the Westchester county line, the IRT #5 runs along an abandoned railroad, the New York, Westchester & Boston, which originally ran from East 133rd Street in Port Morris, South Bronx north to Port Chester. While the width of the right of [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Morris Park Pelham Parkway
Though the MTA is relentlessly diligent when it comes to standardizing the signage of New York’s 468 subway stations, replacing the gorgeous enamel signs of old with standard black and white signs (and even those have substituted the old Akzidenz/Folio fonts they formerly used in favor of the universal Helvetica), seekers of relics of the [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan Queens
BROOKLYN’S HARBORSIDE RAILROADS Years ago, the bustling Brooklyn waterfront,notably in Williamsburg, under the Manhattan Bridge, and Sunset Park, was home to a number of railroads that served busy shipping and freight interests. The past couple of decades, however, have seen active railroads dwindle down to only two. We’ll have a look at a pair of [...]
Categorized in: Neighborhoods Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn DUMBO Sunset Park
Only a handful of railroad grade crossings remain in New York City. The term ‘grade’ crossing has nothing to do with school…it means anywhere a railroad crosses a main road at the street level, and crossing gates, signals and alarms are mandated. The Long Island Railroad gradually eliminated its NYC grade crossings relatively early in the 20th [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Glandale Hunters Point Little Neck Queens
The Bronx is the only mainland borough in New York City, and in the golden age of railroads it had plenty of freight and passenger routes that served upstate New York and New England. On this page, we’ll take a peek at one of those lines, the Harlem River Branch, which still has station houses [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Hunts Point Morris Park Pelham Bay
New York City used to be an el town. Beginning in the 1870s on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, dozens of elevated lines rose and swift travel over traffic-clogged streets became a reality. Whole neighborhoods came into being as former farmland was converted for business and residential purposes at the coming of elevated trains. But in [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Queens
In the 1990s, the Long Island Rail Road made great strides in improving things for its customers…a brand new terminal in Penn Station, rebuilt and restored station houses, and brand new cars. Few consider, though, that Brooklyn is a part of Long Island as well. Looking at the defunct Brooklyn branches of the LIRR shows [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Queens Ridgewood
The LIRR Bushwick Branch, probably the least-known active railroad in New York City, runs from Bushwick Place and Montrose Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn to its junction with the Long Island Rail Road Montauk Branch near Flushng Avenue and Rust Street in Maspeth, Queens. At some points it’s smooth and well-maintained, but at others, it’s overgrown [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Bushwick
The Soho Building, on Greene Street between Spring and Prince Streets, is home to NYC’s most unusual subway map…despite the fact that no subways run underneath it and that the nearest subway station is two blocks away on Prince Street and Broadway (N/R). So where’s the subway map? … It’s embedded in the sidewalk. Unfortunately, I [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan maps Soho
Unbeknownst to most, an abandoned Long Island Railroad tunnel runs for a couple of blocks below Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn Heights. But this isn’t just any tunnel…it was abandoned for 140 years with virtually no one knowing about its existence! It was built in 1844 and was used in passenger service for fourteen years, ending [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Heights Walt Whitman
In the past few months (as of this writing, April 2000) the Long Island Rail Road (or, as some call it, the Long Island Fail Road) has completely replaced its fleet of ancient cars going back to the mid-1950s with a modern, bright fleet of bi-level cars. While many railfans (including me) welcome the new [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Auburndale Flushing Queens Richmond Hill
The Rockaway Line is a mighty good road, the Rockaway Line is the road to ride, to paraphrase the old song. Or rather, it used to be the road to ride, since no passenger trains have run on it since 1962. The Long Island Railroad’s Rockaway Beach Branch diverged from the LIRR’s Main Line in Rego [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Forest Hills Ozone Park Queens Rego Park Woodhaven
Back in the 1940s, every once in awhile, subway cars and stations would become sort of unkempt, and people could be less than courteous. Maybe there’d be a candy wrapper on the platform. Maybe a gent would forget to hold a door for a lady. And shockingly, every so often, someone would try to sneak [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan signs
When is a subway not a subway? When, of course, it’s an elevated. The elevated used to be king in Manhattan. The sun never saw lengthy stretches of Pearl Street, the Bowery, Greenwich Street, West Broadway, Columbus Avenue, First Avenue, Second Avenue, and Sixth, Eighth and Ninth Avenues, since they were hidden beneath elevated lines. [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx elevated Manhattan
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Elvis Presley Sunset Park
In 1999, before High Line Park was a glimmer in the eye of preservationists (well, perhaps a small glimmer, as recounted in the new book chronicling its conversion from just another rusting, abandoned elevated rail line to the showpiece of the West Side) I took the Forgotten NY camera, which was then a point and [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Greenwich Village Manhattan
The Fourth Avenue IND elevated station opened July 1, 1933, and has pretty much been allowed to decay ever since. In my opinion, the MTA doesn’t know what it has, since it combines classical and Art Deco styles in a seemingly effortless manner. Hopefully, the MTA will wake up soon and realize it has a [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: 4th Avenue Brooklyn elevated
In the 1930s and continuing into the 1950s, New York City went through a great deal of expense to eliminate its elevated trains. One by one, the celebrated els of yore came down: The Ninth Avenue, the Sixth, the Second, and finally, the Third (its Bronx tracks would not fall until 1973). Less publicized and [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Chelsea Manhattan
Still thriving between St. George and Tottenville, the Staten Island Railway, a subway in everything but name that extends from St. George Ferry to Tottenville, was once much more extensive. On this page we’ll show you traces of the SIRT as it once was. A short history: Non-residents of Staten Island may not know that [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Arlington Arrochar Mariners Harbor Port Richmond South Beach Staten Island West Brighton
In Country Days in New York City, author Divya Summers describes this old commuter line that is now used for another purpose: The Old Putnam Railroad Track, a defunct railroad bad that one Manhattan-based Urban Park Ranger tells me is his favorite walk in the city (“I love being out in the fresh New York air”, [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Riverdale Van Cortlandt Park
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Eastchester Morris Park Williamsbridge
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: abandoned stations Bronx elevated
The 18th Street Station (#4,5,6) was killed off in 1948 when the 14th St. platform was lengthened, making it redundant. Here are a couple of pictures from the now-abandoned, decrepit platform: The old “18″ plaque is barely visible behind graffiti vandals’ defacement. Underside of a staircase that once led to Park Avenue South and East 18th Street. [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: abandoned stations Manhattan
On this page, we’ll take a look at some of the unusual sights in the subways that don’t fit into any other category… The 181st Street station (IND, A line) is unusual for a couple of reasons: first, it is among the deepest subway stations in the system, and second, it has this rather unique and [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan
Some NYC subway stations actually have above-ground station buildings. Quite frequently these houses will appear at subway stations that have been parts of actual railroad lines in the past, such as the D line between Sheeepshead Bay and Avenue H, or the #5 between 180th St. and Dyre Avenue. Other times, though, a station house was placed at a [...]
When the subways were first built in the early 1900s, they were blessed to have artists who put great care into the appearance of the stations and platforms. Beautiful signs and plaques were fashioned to tell the paying customers what stations they were in…and what the history of the region was. The Chambers Street station, completed [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan plaques
Located under City Hall Park is the world’s most beautiful former subway station. It is located at the south edge of the loop that turns Lexington Avenue IRT locals (#6) around to the south of the Brooklyn Bridge station. It’s been closed to the public since 1945. It can be seen by staying on the #6 [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: abandoned stations City Hall Manhattan
One of the great joys of the NYC subway system is that so much of its rich heritage is still on display for all to see. The preservation of its ancient terra-cotta platform signs is already well-documented. Here, we’ll take a look at the various ways the city marks subway stations at street level. The removal of [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Manhattan Queens
The Long Island Rail Road has recently abandoned a number of stations In Queens and Nassau. Many of these stations are along the Montauk Branch between Jamaica and Long Island City. These unelectrified tracks are stilll used for freight and for express Jamaica-LIC service for a few runs during the week. LIRR buff Robert Anderson has an [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Queens
On this page we’ll show you a couple of ancient signs that pointed you to the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, as well as a few ancient oddities that can’t be classified in any one section. This tiled sign points to the PATH train in the IND station at 14th Street and Sixth Avenue. The PATH, which stands for [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brighton Line Brooklyn elevated
This sign, one of two located on the mezzanine of the IRT East 149th Street Station where the 2,4 and 5 lines meet, points the way to the New York Central Lines, today’s Metro-North. However, there is no Metro-North station at the Grand Concourse and East 149th Street; the closest station is the Melrose station, 12 blocks [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Manhattan
Signs on subway platforms sometimes have a way of preserving for posterity the former names of streets under which they ran, or former names of station stops. This is especially true in Queens, along the 7 line: 33rd (Rawson St), 40th St (Lowery St), 46th St (Bliss St), 52nd St (Lincoln Ave) and 69th St (Fisk [...]
Categorized in: Signs Subways & Trains Tagged with: Bronx Brooklyn Queens
Every year, the New York City Transit Museum trots out a vintage subway train from the golden era of transit and takes it for a three-hour spin along the subways and elevateds of the New York City Subway system. One recent such trip [1998] saw the MTA bring out a BMT D-Type Triplex that first ran in 1927 along [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Brooklyn Canarsie Transit Museum
Next time you are taking the Times Square Shuttle toward Grand Central, walk toward the northern end of the platform. You’ll find a locked door with the word “Knickerbocker” above it. What could it be? Where does the door go? Behind the door is a stair which led up to the rear lobby of the Knickerbocker Hotel [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Manhattan Times Square
What’s that bricked up doorway with “Clinton Hall” carved above it on the southbound platform at the Astor Place (#6) station all about? Where did it go? There really was a Clinton Hall, and it’s still standing at the triangle of Astor Place, East 8th Street and Lafayette Street. When the Astor Place station was finished in [...]
Categorized in: Subways & Trains Tagged with: Cooper Square Manhattan
