Gary Fonville passes along this photo of a decommissioned token booth at the 50th Street station serving uptown C and E trains. Before actual token dispensing kiosks were constructed in subway stations, they were very small rooms in which cash and a request for however many tokens were desired were slid under a depression in a wooden counter with a glass screen (before that, actual iron bars), upon which the token booth clerk would slide the tokens and change to the customer.
A more thorough preservation of an old school token booth can be found at the downtown Lexington Avenue Line Wall Street station serving #4 and 5 trains.
3/9/15