Transit and Museums? Two of my loves rolled up into one.
Visitors to New York want to see the Empire State Building, Times Square, and the Statue of Liberty. I try to coax them off the beaten path.
New York Transit Museum, platform level. RL Fifield, 2010.
The New York Transit Museum is as much a social history museum as it is one of technology. The creation of public transportation was a catylyst for growth – without it, the city jams up. It also gave people the opportunity to spread out a bit: much of the upper reaches of Manhattan, Queens, and outer reaches of Brooklyn experience unprecedented building booms after the subway was built. It allowed people to work in one place, and come home somewhere a little less congested.
Walker Evans Few Are Chosen tribute pic. 2008.
The Transit Museum is housed in a decommissioned, stub-end subway station in Brooklyn, near the Borough Hall station. On the Mezzanine floor are exhibits about the construction of the station, as well as a changing exhibition space. There’s also a giddy chronology of turnstiles laid out on the floor. Below, the platform level stores a history of public transit technology, from cars that ran on the elevated railways to specially painted cars for the World’s Fair. The Transit Museum hosts tours to Coney Island and other destinations using their old equipment. See my post on the December Vintage Subway Ride.
Check out The New York Transit Museum site for more information. And if you enjoy subway porn, check out nycsubway.org. Beautiful, incredible repository of many photographers’ efforts to capture the history of the subway on film. The 1980s images of grafitti covered trains and deteriorating stations are really poignant. Click, click, click.
RL Fifield, 2011.
Great post about the New York Transit Museum. I’ve loved trains since I was kid. Over the years I’ve fallen in love with passenger train travel and transit. This museum is one the best of countless rail and transit museums I’ve been to. It goes beyond the collection of rolling stock to tell how these cars moved the millions and transformed New York City to what it is today. It also tells the stories of those who built the first subways. It sure was tough and dangerous work in the days before deep bore tunnels and tunnel boring machines!! The subways and transit in general are one of my favorite parts about New York City. It is so great to be able to take Amtrak or Metro North from where I am in the Hudson Valley down to the City and then ride the subways to wherever I want to go to in the city be it a baseball game, the Brooklyn Museum, or another trip to the Transit Museum. A study showed that if every one of the 5 million people who rides the subway daily drove instead more than half of Manhattan would have to be comprised of parking garages and a good portion of Brooklyn would be of these monstrosities too. Also it was interesting to learn about the saga of the Second Avenue Subway and the cars purchased in the 40’s or 50’s for it!! Hopefully the 2nd Ave subway does not end up like that Canal at Colonial Williamsburg!! It was also interesting to learn about the dark days of the 70’s and 80’s it’s interesting the city faced it’s darkest days during the same time, a coincidence I don’t think so. Have you been to the Transit Museum Gallery Annex at Grand Central? it’s totally free and has a lot of interesting exhibits. One exhibit a couple of years ago featured items recovered when they were building the new stub end station at South Ferry to replace the old loop station. They were many colonial and Revolutionary era items including British Grenadier Helmets, Shoes, and fragments of delftware dishes telling of a period in New York’s history long before the EL’s and subways transformed New York City.
Thanks for the great comment. While I am familiar with the Transit Museum Gallery Annex at GCT, I’m sorry I missed that exhibition. Sounded great!
Your Welcome. I also enjoyed the piece about the melancholy Penn Station and the Old CNJ Communipaw Terminal building and it’s train shed that reminds me of the one at Hoboken Terminal. The CNJ closed that terminal in 1967 when they shifted the CNJ trains to terminate at The PRR Newark Penn Station with the Aldene Plan. The trains off the old CNJ lines are the NJ Transit diesel trains at Newark Penn that make so much noise!! Standing at Hoboken Terminal made me think how much I wish I could’ve had the chance to ride the great limiteds like the 20th Century, the George Washington, or the Broadway Limited. Alas being in the Hudson Valley on the West Shore means most of my trip are by car which stresses me out to no end. So i consider any train trip as being a vacation itself!
Last month I had the pleasure of taking the train on a family vacation to Colonial Williamsburg all the way from Poughkeepsie NY. It was so nice just to relax and watch the scenery unfold, starting with us passing West Point and I was thinking about the “Great Chain” and Benedict Arnold’s treason. Then thinking about how I was more or less following the Continental Army’s march to Yorktown in 1781. It was then a nice treat to ride the Acela to DC, which the is closest we get to High Speed Rail in the US! Then it was back to a P42 Genesis Diesel Electric unit hauling the beer can shaped Amfleet I’s with their famous gun slit windows for the journey down the old Richmond, Fredricksburg, and Potomac RR through Fredricksburg to the Amshack Depot at Staples Mill, Then pleasure of being able to take a short a walk to the Cafe Car for a can of Pepsi, then the slow trip through the CSX Acca Freight Yards,and a and into the historic Main Street Station, and over the old C and O viaduct and onto the Peninsula Subdivision to Williamsburg as the sun set, and lastly arriving at the stately small town depot that was constructed by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation as part of the restoration in the 1930’s. Williamsburg was so desperate for the railroad that for a brief time during the 1880’s the tracks ran down Duke of Gloucester St and over the ruins of the old Capitol. Once I was there the staff at CW Woodlands Hotel picked up US at the station and we’re able to take CW’s impressive and free bus system to Yorktown, Busch Gardens and to the Wonderful programming in the Historic Area. Williamsburg is a wonderful place, and the ability to take the train there, and get around without having to be chained to a car, only made it better. I would not want to travel back to the 18th century any other way!! When it comes to traveling in the the Northeast Corridor Give me Liberty, “train travel” or Give me a Drive on I95!!!