Heins and LaFarge used a special tiling, color, and typography scheme at City Hall used nowhere else in the system, employing Rafael Guastavino’s interlocking tile styling. Track map of City Hall, Brooklyn Bridge and Worth ack map: Peter Dougherty New York Times map of original subway, 1904. Postcard of City Hall station shortly after its Octoopening. from collection of Ed Levine New, lengthier subway cars then entering the system fleet made the station a liability: its sharply curved platform made for lengthy gaps when the new cars’ doors were opened.Ĭity Hall station is the most beautiful of NYC’s unknown rail relics. The original line ran from City Hall to 145th Street and is now a part of today’s #6 line, Times Square-Grand Central Shuttle, and #1 line.Ĭity Hall station is tiny compared with other NYC subway stations, has only one platform, and has been devilishly difficult to enter since December 31st, 1945.

Though more recently built stations are old enough to be recognized as historical artifacts in their own right, subway design reached its apotheosis in the original 28 subway stations, designed by architects George Heins and Christopher LaFarge, engineered and built by William Barclay Parsons and opened to the public on October 27, 1904. Unlike most railfans, however, the trains themselves for me are only a sidebar to the main attraction: station signage and design. I love the trains just the same. The MTA and the NYPD don’t really return the affection, with photo bans, official or otherwise. And, there’s a strike every 20 years or so. A look at a 1967 report I recently inherited detailing all the spanking new lines to be built will create despair: only a partial one (the 63rd Street connector) was ever completed. The waits are too long, graffiti is creeping back again, the express won’t wait for passengers to cross the platform from the local, and token booth clerks, or rather station attendants, can bark more often than offer polite responses. Like many things, the subways disappoint more often than not.

Nyc subway station