Celebrate 120 years of the NYC subway with a new exhibit and vintage train rides
60th Street Tunnel connection opening, 1955. New York Transit Museum NYCTA Photograph Unit Collection, 2005.48.270
The New York Transit Museum is celebrating the 120th anniversary of the city’s subway system with a new exhibit and vintage train rides. Debuting September 26, “The Subway Is…” explores how New York City’s subway system has shaped its cultural identity and will showcase images and artifacts from the museum’s collections. To coincide with the new exhibit, the museum is hosting four Inaugural Run Nostalgia Rides on vintage Lo-V subway cars from 1917, retracing the original route of NYC’s first subway line.
Using a diverse array of historic artifacts, photographs, and multimedia installations, the exhibit examines the subway system’s beginnings as a revolutionary idea that changed urban transportation forever. It also explores the never-ending ways to finish the sentence, “The subway is…”
The exhibit delves into the challenges of constructing the subway through the city’s varied topography and highlights the diverse immigrant workforce that built the system, celebrating the subway as both an engineering marvel and a work of art.
“The Subway Is…” also analyzes how the subway is effectively NYC’s circulatory system, connecting New Yorkers across boroughs, facilitating cultural exchange, and allowing the city to grow and prosper.
“Very few things exist that are as synonymous with New York as our subway. Whether you hear a snippet of the sound of a train or catch a quick glimpse of a station or a subway car, you know you’re in New York City,” New York Transit Museum Director Concetta Bencivenga said.
“Celebrating this incredible milestone anniversary offers an opportunity to explore the myriad ways the subway has transformed our region over the past 120 years and encourages us to ponder what might be in store for the next 120.”
Coinciding with the new exhibit, the museum will host four special Nostalgia Rides on vintage Lo-V subway cars. On October 27 and November 16 at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., these rides will offer passengers a chance to experience what it was like to ride the subway 120 years ago. The journey will trace portions of the city’s first subway line, which first opened on October 27, 1904.
Leaving from the decommissioned Old South Ferry Station, the train will travel north along the 1/2/3 line to the Bronx before returning via the Lexington Avenue line. Passengers will get a glimpse of the famous Old City Hall Station before the ride concludes at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall Station.
Vintage ride tickets are available for purchase here, with prices starting at $60 for non-member adults.
Plus, a city-wide social media campaign will launch on Subway Day, October 27. Throughout October, the museum’s Instagram page will feature special collaboration posts leading up to a unique initiative inviting museums, parks, journalists, New Yorkers, and visitors to share their thoughts on what the subway means to them by completing the sentence: #TheSubwayIs…
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