Some of my earliest memories as a youngster growing up in New York City involve the Transit Museum. Housed at the abandoned Court St. subway station — once a terminus for the IND Fulton St. line and a vague part of some plans for the Second Ave. Subway — the two-track museum features comprehensive exhibits upstairs and a stellar collection of vintage trains below. Now that I’m a grown-up, I can’t run through the trains with wild abandon, but I will be hosting a discussion series at the museum next year.
In today’s Times, the Transit Museum takes center stage. Edward Rothstein reviews the museum through the lens its newest exhibit “ElectriCity: Powering New York’s Rails.” The exhibit, he says, highlights the way subway technology is slow to change: “It is also astonishing how much equipment from the turn of the 20th century was used almost to the century’s end. A wooden ammeter for measuring current was in use from 1900 until the 1980s; the system’s rotary converters that changed alternating current into direct current were used until 1999; a 1932 control board was in service until 1994. How is this possible, given the ordinary pace of technological change?”
I’ve always believed the Transit Museum to be an undiscovered gem in New York’s museum-rich landscape. As a little kid, Brooklyn seemed so exotic to me, but today, it’s a short subway ride and a jump back in time away. If you’ve never been, give yourself a treat and go.
7 comments
The Transit Museum in Brooklyn is in the top 5 NYC museums. And no Hipsters!
Art is important, but you can’t ride around on a Rembrandt. Unless you can sell one.
Besides the fact that plenty of hipsters go the Transit Museum, why does that impact your enjoyment of a place at all? Seems to me as though you’re creating a boogey man out of nothing.
It’s the Pabst Blue Ribbon that scares me away. And the doing-everything-ironically thing.
“Some of my earliest memories as a youngster growing up in New York City involve the Transit Museum.”
i’m old enough now to have seen a few youth cultures, and the hipsters are the worst. and you’re a young ‘un! 🙂
Yeah, the transit museum is a lot of fun. It’s not really a museum you can go to over and over, but it’s well worth an occasional visit. Lots of interesting stuff in there.
Most fun I’ve ever had in a museum, and some fantastic photo opportunities in the old train cars. I only wish it was larger to fit more of the history in it!
We will be going for the first time for my daughter’s 3rd birthday at the end of the month. We gave her a list of options and “train museum!” was all she was interested in. I guess we have a future transit geek on our hands!