On This Day: New York gets a Subway
by Noel Agnew
On this day in 1904 the city of New York got its first official subway, riding from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway. Run by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (even though it only served Manhattan when it opened), it attracted 150,000 passengers on it’s first evening of service. The track ran for 9.1 miles and served 28 stations. This marks the beginning of the current New York subway system and the MTA, but there were other underground rail experiments before 1904. Fully 60 years earlier the Long Island Railroad ran trains under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and in 1870 the inventor Alfred E. Beachhad had a subway car blown by a giant fan for 312 feet under lower Broadway.
The ornate station at City Hall where the first IRT subway journey started is no longer in use due to its curved nature which made it impractical to lengthen. It was shut down in 1945 and its entrances sealed. It is not quite lost to the public, however, experienced straphangers knowing that today’s 6 train still uses the old City Hall to turn from its downtown to uptown route. Just stay on the train at the last stop to do the loop (and hope you don’t get yelled at).
