Catch a glimpse of a New York City legend for the price of an MTA ticket

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/catch-a-glimpse-of-a-new-york.html

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I was hoping this was going to be the sub-Rosa subway. I’d love to know if that is open to the public any longer after being rediscovered/unearthed years ago.

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A monument to what was, and could have been, I suppose.
Those tiles are beautiful.

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The acoustics must be awesome, love to hear some music there.

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I here’ed that the music played there was very acoustic.

:upside_down_face:

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I highly recommend hopping on the 6 train to glimpse this little treasure. The NYC Transit Museum also offers tours of the station for its members:

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“totally legal.”

seems legit.

It’s got gorgeous architecture and luxury befitting the time it was built. But, it was also a death trap (that novel curved platform wasn’t exactly conducive to passenger safety) and couldn’t accommodate the longer trains. Nearby stations built to the newer standards further rendered it obsolete.

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Don’t forget your proton packs.

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Yes! Both the Beach Pneumatic Transit in Manhattan and the Crystal Palace pneumatic railway in London were about 150 years before the Musk hyperloop idea. And weren’t the private highway for the ultra rich the Los Angeles tunnel looks like.

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There are curved platforms still in use at Bank tube station, but the curve seems to be less sharp. There is still a gap of a foot between central doors and the platform:

Never been there but feel like I was. That abandoned subway station inspired the set for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret Of The Ooze - built on a sound stage in North Carolina, a lot of the exquisite detail was muted from all the smoke they pumped in to create an artful haze. image

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Guastavino Rocks!

(awesome…awesome…awesome…)

(love…love…love…)

(music…music…music…)

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A death trap? No one died there, no one even came close to dying. Many stations, such as 14th street, have curved platforms.

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I was being hyperbolic but the safety aspects, lack of compatibility with newer cars, and impracticality to modernize it were big factors in what led to it’s closing in 1945. It was never a particularly notable station beyond it being a showcase.

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“Mind the gap!”

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