Subway History

Shea Stadium, pre-blue paint, looms over the 7 train. (Photo courtesy of NYC Subway)

When the Yankees said their good byes to Yankee Stadium last Sunday, the MTA honored the House that Ruth Built with a Nostalgia Train ride from Grand Central to Yankee Stadium. Tomorrow, with the Mets primed to send off the regular season portion of its time at Shea Stadium, the MTA will again be running old train cars from Grand Central out to Flushing.

While Shea doesn’t have the same cachet as Yankee Stadium, it has long played an integral role in New York City history. When the Dodgers wanted a new stadium on the site of the Atlantic Yards, Robert Moses proposed the current location of Shea Stadium as a compromise. For a whole lot more on Shea Stadium, both inside and out, check out Paul Lukas’ ode to the stadium on ESPN.com.

Meanwhile, for railfans and baseball fans, the 7 has long represented the Mets. It was back in 1999, in a Sports Illustrated interview when John Rocker said, “Imagine having to take the 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.” Never again would any New Yorker degrade the 7.

The MTA plans to run the nostalgia train just once at 11 a.m. It will run local, arriving at Shea by noon on Sunday. The cars include a 50-year-old R12 and a 1964 World’s Fair Car. The latter cars were service as recently as six years ago as the creaky red birds that run on the IRT. All in all, it’s a nice way for the MTA to recognize the 44-year history of Shea Stadium.

As Yankee fans across the city know all too well, this evening marks the final regular season game at Yankee Stadium. Nothing quite identifies the Yankees as the ride north on the 4 train to the stadium. When the trains come above ground after leaving 149th St./Grand Concourse, Yankee Stadium looms majestically over the tracks, and astute fans know to keep their eyes out for that glimpse inside the stadium from the tracks.

As part of the pre-game ceremony honoring the House that Ruth Built, New York City Transit is planning on running a special nostalgia train along the 4 line from Grand Central up to Yankee Stadium. Via the agency’s press release:

What better way to celebrate the end of an era than hopping aboard a vintage IRT Jerome Ave. express to get to the game.

The four-car “Nostalgia Special” is scheduled to leave Grand Central-42nd Street at approximately 6 p.m., arriving at 161st Street-Yankee Stadium about 30 minutes later. The cars, originally operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit system, began service in 1917 and it is possible that at least one of them carried fans to the game on the first opening day.

The Lo-V subway cars, veterans of more than five decades of service before they were retired in the 1960s, serve as a splendid illustration of just how far subway car technology has advanced over the past 100 years. Customers will be able to sample the modern comforts of NYC Transit’s New Technology Cars on the trip home.

It’s quite the way to honor the closing of the stadium. Fans can pretend it is the early days of Yankee Stadium all over again. The four cars will be from the Lo-V series which operated along the IRT lines from 1917 through 1964. I believe the car numbers, for the rail aficionados, are 5483, 5443, 5292 and 5290.

Personally, I’m heading to this game later this afternoon. While I’d love to take the Nostalgia Train to Yankee Stadium, I’m probably shooting to get the stadium earlier than 6:30. But this is a great way to send off a New York City institution, and the folks who find themselves on this train, intentionally or otherwise, are in for a treat.

Photo via NYC Subway.

For nearly eight decades, the New York City Subway system has sat in stagnant. Since unification in 1940, the City has witnessed the birth of just a handful of new lines with even fewer planned. Yet, subway inertia wasn’t always the norm.

In 1929 and again in 1939, New York City planners dreamed big. Before cars came to dominate our transportation landscape, the city knew that extending the subway would truly complete the system and usher in unprecedented boom times for New York. Thus, along came the IND Second System.

Yesterday’s post on the uncompleted remnants of a Brooklyn subway stop hints at the scope of this ambitious plan. Today, we delve deeper into this vast civic undertaking. The city wanted 100 miles of new tracks connecting every borough to one another. The map at right (click to enlarge) is a work of subway art, and the plan is a beauty.

The never-completed and now-abandoned station at South 4th St. in Brooklyn should not be confused with the West 4th St. stop in Manhattan. (Photo via Etsy)

Alternately one of the more endearing or most annoying aspects of the New York City Subway system, post-unification, is the naming scheme for stations. The system has two stops in different boroughs that share the 7th Ave. designation, three stations called 86th St. and a whole bunch of Kings Highway and Ave. U stops. The list is endless, and the only way to tell them apart is by consulting a map or knowing the system’s ins and outs.

There are, of course, a few notable exceptions to the issues of dual names. The various 42nd St. stops all carry with them the designation of the nearby landmarks. We have Times Square-42nd St., 42nd St.-5th Ave./Bryan Park and 42nd St.-Grand Central. And then there is West Fourth Street and the numbered streets labeled East along the IRT White Plains Road line, specifically-named rarities in a system that largely assumes its riders know where they’re going.

This past weekend, that nomenclature was the subject of a question in The New York Times City Section’s FYI column. Asked a curious reader: “Most subway stops’ names use only the street number (42nd Street, for example). How come West Fourth Street and a few stops in the Bronx (like East 180th Street and East 149th Street) are given an east/west distinction?”

The answer:

Mainly to avoid confusion.

Herb Schonhaut, manager in New York City Transit’s Office of Station Signage, said the Fourth Street station uses the word “West” to distinguish it from the planned but unbuilt “South” Fourth Street Station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Mr. Schonhaut added that East 180th Street (on the No. 2 and 5 lines) and East 149th Street (No. 6 line) use “East” to contrast with similar stations to the west: 180th Street/Bronx Park (which closed in 1952) and 149th Street/Grand Concourse. East 143rd Street was distinguished from 143rd Street on the Third Avenue el, which shut down in 1955.

Now, the second part of this answer, I knew. When the subways were first built, the IRT, BMT and IND lines were competing systems, and it was not until 1940 that all three systems were placed under the control of the city. The three companies followed their own naming conventions, and we are still today stuck with this relic of the past.

The first part of the answer — about South Fourth St. — was news to me, and the Waterfront Preservation Alliance of Greenpoint and Williamsburg did the heavy lifting on this intriguing station. The now-abandoned semi-station at South Fourth Street in Brooklyn was to be a part of the IND Second System, a great idea lost to the Great Depression. WGPA has more:

The proposed service to Williamsburg included two new lines: one connecting to the Sixth Avenue line and running beneath the East River from Houston Street; the second connecting to the Eighth Avenue line and running under the River from Grand Street in Manhattan (with the last stop at Columbia Street).

In Williamsburg, the north line was to run beneath Grand Street as far as Driggs, and then turn south to meet up with the second line, which was to run under Broadway and South Fourth Street (more detail here). All of this was to meet up with the Crosstown Line (aka the G train) at Broadway and South 4th. That was the South 4th Street station referred to in the Times article…From South Fourth Street, the lines continued east. In Bed Stuy, they were to branch off. The Utica Avenue would run to the south, eventually winding up in Sheepshead Bay. The Rockaway line would continue northeast along Myrtle and Central Avenues, and then turn south and run all the way to the Rockaways.

So the two Fourth Streets would have been a mere four stations apart, and the coverage of the subways between Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan would have been vastly improved. But, alas, the Second System was not to be. While some of the plans — a subway to the Rockaways, for instance — saw the light of the day, the ambitious expansion drive faltered before long, and the West Fourth St. name is a testament to an era in which the city dreamed big and came up small.

The city never received the subway upgrades in wanted in the late 1960s. (Click to enlarge.)

Every rail fan has their own pet project for a better New York City subway system, and everyone likes to dream a day in which that system is a reality. Recently, the topic du jour has focused around ways to connect the outer boroughs while avoiding Manhattan and ways to extend current lines past their outer terminals into under-served neighborhoods.

In recent months, foremost among those dreamers has been the MTA. Before the economy had completely collapsed underneath us, Elliot “Lee” Sander, CEO and Executive Director of the MTA, had unveiled an ambitious expansion plan during his State of the MTA speech. The plan focused around the Regional Plan Association’s circumferental subway route. This line, using a mix of MTA rights of way and pre-existing tracks would connect to 19 subway lines and three boroughs while avoiding Manhattan.

At the time, I expressed my support, in theory, for the idea while recognizing that the perfect storm of money and political circumstances would have to align for this pipe dream to approach reality, and I left it at that. Last week, Cap’n Transit opined on the state of Brooklyn-Queens subway connectors and briefly mentioned the RPA’s plan as an outgrowth of some long lost subway expansion plans from the 1960s.

So, a-diggin’ we shall go. The year was 1968, and Mayor Lindsay’s New York was a sitting on the rise. The financial crises of the 1970s, from which it would take the city a good twenty years to recover, were nowhere in sight, and expansion was all the rage. Among the city improvement plans was an ambitions, $2-billion MTA expansion plan for the New York City subway system. These plans, developed prior to the MTA’s takeover of the subways on March 1, 1968, called for an expansion of about 40 route miles or what was then 20 percent of the subway system.

As Richard Witkin of The Times reported then, we would have seen a great number of expansion plans come to fruition including:

• A new Queens line through the planned 63rd St. tunnel that would shadow the LIRR to Jamaica and then veer south to the LIRR main line to the city limits.
• Subway service out to Douglaston via the 63rd St. tunnel.
• A Bronx line from the Harlem River to Dyre Ave. via the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad tracks…
• …and a Second Ave. Subway from south of Wall St. north to this new Bronx line.
• An extension of the Nostrand Ave. line out to Mill Basin, an area still in need of subway service today.
• A subway spur from the Atlantic branch of the LIRR to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Over the next few years, subway advocates would continue to >trumpet these plans and talk as though they were just around the corner. Two years after this grand unveiling, John J. Gilhooley, a former Transit Authority worker, wrote at length about the MTA’s plans with little doubt as to their feasibility.

As time wore on, the plans changed to become even grander. As proposed maps from the time show, the outer boroughs would see more connections and a far-flung system while Manhattan would see train service to the far West Side, a Second Ave. line and an innovative subway running from 1st Ave. and Houston St. to 1st Ave. and 14th St. via Ave C.

But dreams do not become a reality. The Second Ave. Subway in the 1970s came to crashing halt when the city’s economy did the same. The 63rd St. Tunnel didn’t open until 1989, and the plans to extend the subway to JFK morphed into an airtrain that started service in 2003. We’re still talking about extending the subways westward and that good ol’ Second Ave. Subway.

It sure is fun to dream, eh?

Miss Subway from March-April 1959 now owns Ellen’s Stardust Diner at 50th St. and 7th Ave. (Source: The New York Times)

Last week, during my post on subway movies, I omitted On The Town. The Comden and Green musical follows three sailors on leave in New York for 24 hours. One of the sailors — Gabey played by Gene Kelly — falls in love with Miss Turnstiles.

Ah, Miss Turnstiles. It’s a New York subway reference lost to the ages. Once upon a time, from May 1941 through 1976, talent agencies appointed a woman Miss Subway every few months. The winner’s picture was plastered on placards throughout the system, and at one point, even Cher got in on the act, writing a song about the contest.

But as with many things, Miss Subway went by the wayside. Despite a one-year hiatus in 2004 that coincided with the 100-year anniversary of the opening of the IRT, the contest has been a relic of New York City history. Over the weekend, The New York Times had fun with past contest winners. In a great “Where Are They Now?” piece, photographer Fiona Gardner and reporter Amy Zimmer tracked down some winners and snapped their current pictures.

It’s a great multimedia presentation on The Times’ site. They have pieces on Miss Subway June 1942, a current lawyer who held the crown from February through August in 1968 and of course Ellen herself, a winner in 1959.

The contest and its spot in history sure do make the subways seem more humane 50 years ago than they are today. But that’s just the nostalgia talking.

The R100 is one of a few old cars set to run this month as part of Nostalgia Train along the V line. (Photo courtesy of New York City Transit)

Remember when subway cars had wicker seats and ceiling fans? Well, if you’re under the age of 50, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, but subway history is going to come alive for a few weeks in December.

Beginning on Sunday, New York City Transit is going to start a five-Sunday run of a Nostalgia Train along the V line between Queens Plaza and Second Ave. You can bet subway watchers and railfans will be out en masse this month snapping photos as often as they can.

According to the MTA, this special holiday Nostalgia Train will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every Sunday in December along the Sixth Avenue local line. “Holiday shoppers will have the opportunity to experience a ride on a train from another era,” NYCT President Howard Roberts said. “With a little bit of luck and good timing, riders will be able to catch a ride on this classic subway train at stations along the V line between Queens Plaza and Second Avenue.”

The train will feature many cars generally on display at the Transit Museum, and Subchat is already buzzing with anticipation. I’ll be doing some train-hunting one of these weekends.

According to the MTA, this Nostalgia Train is designed to highlight the history of the IND. Among the cars included will be Car No. 100, an R1-type car that was the first of 300 placed in service when the IND opened 75 years ago; Car No. 484, an R4 car that was outfitted with a then-experimental public address system; and Car No. 1575, an original R7 that, after a wreck, served as the prototype to the R10.

Get your cameras ready; bring a book for those long waits on the platforms; and have fun. Nostalgia Train spotting is a great way to experience the subways as they once were.