City Hall Station (New York City Subway)

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The disused City Hall subway station in New York City, closed since 1945
Early postcard of the train station, around 1913

The City Hall subway station served from 1904 to 1945 as access to the first New York subway route, the English so-called H-Line of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line or Manhattan Main Line , the New York City Subway , at that time nor the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT). As the starting station, it was the southernmost stop on the line with 27 other stations and was located next to Broadway on a turning loop in front of the City Hall , which was about a hundred years older , in the middle of the Civic Center in Manhattan . The only platform on the northbound platform is on a wide loop and is passed through without stopping by trains on Line 6 , which ends or starts at the nearby Brooklyn Bridge station.

history

The station was designed by Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908) as the prime station of the IRT. Guastavino has also planned the Grand Central Terminal (1913; compare there the vaulted ceiling of the Oyster Bar), the American Museum of Natural History and, among other buildings in the city and nationwide, a building for the Mount Sinai Hospital . This is also where the NYC subway opening as a whole took place.

Schematic plan, how the station works
CITY HALL STATION. SKYLIGHT AND ENTRANCE TO CONTROL ROOM. - Interborough Rapid Transit Subway (Original Line), New York, New York County, NY HAER NY, 31-NEYO, 86-48.tif

The station before the terminus from the north is the neighboring Brooklyn Bridge station . The City Hall Station was prominent due to its location directly in front of the town hall of the same name in Park Row - on the corner of City Hall Park . The access kiosk above the staircase from the street was immediately to the left of the main entrance to City Hall on today's Steve Flanders Square (then an extension of Murray Street). Before it was closed in 1945, it was long considered the best that the New York subway had to offer in terms of design and equipment. In three places there was daylight on the platform (also at some other stations), electric brass lights and a special vault cladding (guastavo tiles). The green and yellow color pattern of the tiles is unique in New York. From a small mezzanine where tickets were sold or checked, the stairs went up to the street.

In New York there are nine different disused and preserved underground stations of the New York City Subway. City Hall Station , also known as City Hall Loop , is one of them. It can only be entered regularly as part of museum events of the Transit Museum . Since its architecture was extremely elaborately designed in the neo-Romanesque style (1902–1904), it is still well worth seeing today. And there is still a possibility for this every day: because you can travel through the station on regular trains on line 6 . It is still allowed to stay in the car when the trains turn between the arrival and departure platforms of the neighboring Brooklyn Bridge station .

Some stations of the NYC subway were shut down in the 1950s, when the platforms had to be lengthened in order to accommodate trains with ten instead of five car lengths on the platforms. Due to the low passenger demand, this was no longer worthwhile at this point. Another problem in this station would have been the new central location of the doors in the subway cars - this meant that when boarding, a “gap”, the gap between the platform edge and the car, had to be overcome in front of the doors that would have produced additional adjustment work.

Background, location on the Trans-Lexington Line

Historic route network of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) 1908
The elevated railways are shown in blue, the new subway in red.
Line numbers at this station, line 4 , line 5 , line 6

The route ran from City Hall Station at City Hall, initially under Lafayette Street and Park Avenue, to the north. At the Grand Central train station it turned left onto 42nd Street and then led to what is now Times Square and on to 242nd Street in the Bronx, today's terminus of the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line . A branch line ran from 96th Street station under Central Park through to Harlem , and from there further under the Harlem River through to Bronx Park on 180th Street . This corresponds to today's IRT Lenox Avenue Line and the southern part of the IRT White Plains Road Line . For decades, the Lexington Avenue Line (also known as the East Side Line ) was the only subway line to and from downtown Manhattan that directly connected the Upper East Side and East Midtown .

Location, surroundings - other well-known buildings near City Hall include St. Paul's Chapel , St. Peters Church, the Woolworth Building , the Tweed Courthouse, the Manhattan Municipal Building , the Park Row Building , One Police Plaza , the Brooklyn Bridge and the elevated railway crossing it. Further to the west is the site of the World Trade Center .

To the south / to Brooklyn , the line continued through the Joralemon Street Tunnel under the East River , originally called the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel . The construction time of this first tunnel under one of the waters surrounding Manhattan from 1903 to 1907 overlapped with the opening of the trunk line in Manhattan. It is named after Joralemon Street, towards Willow Place, in Brooklyn. With its inauguration in 1908, the City Hall station was only the terminus for the local line 6. Express line 6 and lines 4 and 5 drove straight past the station.

A risk of confusion due to the name should be considered - today there are two subway stations nearby that also have the City Hall in their name: Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall on the corner of Park Row and Center Street (for lines 4, 5, 6) and City Hall Underground Station on the corner of Murray Street and Broadway (for N, R, W trains on the BMT Broadway Line). It is City Hall there is a Location of the two lines within the meaning of close to the City Hall and not the proper name of the now no longer approached first City Hall subway station.

A special announcement

A special announcement for the NYC subway is made in the train arriving from the north for the reasons shown at the current terminus Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall :

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last downtown stop on this train. The next stop on this train will be Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall on the uptown platform.

Translation: Dear Sir or Madam , This is the last downtown stop of this train, the next stop of this train follows in Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall on the platform towards Uptown .

Then the doors close and the train goes into the turning loop.

Three plaques commemorate the then management of the IRT under August Belmont junior and the architects / engineers involved

Numbers and data about the train station

Start of construction: March 24, 1900
Opening: October 28, 1904 (at the same time inauguration of the line)
Closing: December 31, 1945

Exhibition, guided tours

The station was renovated for the centenary in 2004 and opened for a few hours. Since then, it has only been available for guided tours after registering with the Transit Museum.

In the meantime, plans to put the station back into operation as a museum branch came to nothing in 1998 for financial reasons. The mentioned tours have been available again since 2006.

Three-sided IRT sign, circa 1904, design attributed to George Lewis Heins and Christopher LaFarge; manufactured by the Pulsifer & Larson Company

See also

literature

  • Brian J. Cudahy: A Century of Subways: Celebrating 100 Years of New York's Underground Railways . Fordham University Press, New York 2003. ISBN 0-8232-2292-6 (English, not viewed)
  • Robert Schwandl: Subways & Light Rail in the USA 1: East Coast / East Coast: Subway, light rail, tram from Boston via New York to Washington DC Robert-Schwandl-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-936573-28- 2 (German and English)
  • Tom Range: New York City Subway (Postcard History) . Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina, 2002, ISBN 0-7385-1086-6 (English, illustrated book); Cover picture, p. 4 (entrance situation), 45, 48 (kiosk)
  • Lee Stookey: Subway Ceramics: A History and Iconography , second edition. Lee Stookey, Brattleboro, Vermont, 1994, ISBN 0-9635486-1-1 (English, illustrated book, not viewed)

Web links

Commons : City Hall (IRT Lexington Avenue Line)  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guastavino had already patented the Gustavino Tile system years earlier in the USA, which is based on the exposed brick vaults (or Catalan vaults) throughout the Mediterranean. In particular, it was considered fire-proof.
  2. ↑ Opening event program - Subway Opening To-day With Simple Ceremony In: The New York Times, October 27, 1904
    Our Subway Open: 150,000 Try It (1904) - Mayor McClellan Runs the First Official Train - Big Crowds Ride At Night. In: The New York Times, October 28, 1904. Quoted from nycsubway.org. Translation: Our subway is open. Mayor McClellan drives the first train. Thousands drive well into the night. (Report from the opening)
  3. ↑ Kiosk photo at forgotten-ny.com
  4. ↑ Joe Brennan: Abandoned Stations
  5. ↑ Contemporary. Map of nycsubway.org (with drawn branch line to the post office)
  6. ↑ Report on the plaques from the inauguration ceremony of the sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (1867-1941)
  7. ^ The New York Times: Historic Station Closed After 41 Years . January 1, 1946. p. 22.
  8. ↑ (New York City) Subways (Facts and Figures under title of Annual Subway Ridership) . In: MTA.info . Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  9. ↑ New York Transit Museum exclusive guided tours. (Page with information about the special tour) As of May 2017

Coordinates: 40 ° 42 ′ 47.7 "  N , 74 ° 0 ′ 24.2"  W.