October 27, 2004

Old City Hall station opened to public on centennial

Thanks to the hot tip posted late in the day at Gothamist, (which was tipped by Mike at Satan's Laundromat,) I got into the original City Hall subway station for about 15 minutes this afternoon. Very exciting as this place has been closed to the public for decades.

Sitting at my desk at 3:15 p.m, I read the station is open to the public until 4 p.m. only. I bolt out the door and arrive at the current City Hall station 30 minutes later. I hoof it upstairs and over to City Hall and sheepishly ask the security guy if he knows where I go to get to the station.

He tells me I can go from there, and he has me send my purse through a screener and I walk through the metal detector. I walk directly in front of City Hall and see a line of about 100 people waiting to get into the station near the security entrance on Broadway. There is a bit of bunting at the entrance and city employees dressed in period costumes. The two skylights are getting help from some high-powered lights strategically placed at ground level to help illuminate the abandoned station. The line snakes past a marker indicating the spot where, "in the presence of George Washington, the Declaration of Independence was read and published to the American Army" on July 9, 1776.

I ask the guy in line behind me how he heard the station would be open today. He says he heard through work, but that it was also in the papers. And I say something about I didn't see anything in the papers saying it would be open to the public. And another suited guy in front of me says "It's not open to the public." And I laugh, and make some foolish gesture like, well, what are we doing here then? And the first guy tells him, "Well they're not checking id's so, it's kind of public." The other guy says something like "harrumph" and shows me his back. I'm guessing that maybe for security reasons, the MTA didn't want to publicize that it would be open, so only let the word out to city employees?

Anyhow, I got in and the woman ticking her clicker each time someone passed said I was 1,168. They had let people line up until 4 p.m., so there were only about 75 people in line after me. I could see one couple holding a NYC guidebook, a likely indication that some random tourists stumbled into a one-of-a-kind experience.

From the entrance, you walk down two short flights of stairs and then enter a domed room where there used to be a ticket booth. The domes and arches are the work of Rafael Guastavino, whose work is also found under the Queensboro Bridge (at what's now Guastavino's restaurant) and in the hallway outside the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal (where you can find the whispering arches.) One wall on this level has a door that I think leads to a staircase going up. I only caught a glimpse as transit workers were stashing stuff in there.

The next staircase takes you down to the platform, which is much shorter than the stations in use now. The 6 train comes through slowly and loudly as it navigates the S-curve leading to the station and along the curved platform. It's a grand place, filled with some of the same type of artifacts I'd seen a month ago on exhibit at the Transit Museum. From one of the exhibits at the museum:

For additional lighting in City Hall station, architects Heins & LaFarge used electric chandeliers ... re-imagining the station as a distant cousin of turn-of-the-century drawing rooms.

For the past half century, only a few transit buffs and history tours have been able to see the station. Walking past City Hall you wouldn’t even know it was there. The Transit Museum lined up funds in the 1990s to turn the station into a satellite museum. A few renovations were made before Mayor Giuliani opposed the plan over security concerns. But with this year’s subway centennial, transit advocates hope the idea will catch on.

There are two tough questions about the museum, the first is money it would cost money – it costs money to rehab and make it so that you could be in there, there are trains going through there are noise and ventilation issues. And then there is the security issue which is really in the hands of the police department and the mayor’s security detail. My hope is they could find some way to open the museum that doesn’t create a security risk for the mayor and brings people and tourists to lower Manhattan and helps in the revival of downtown.

Publicly, the MTA says it’s still studying an assessment by the Police Department. But government sources say opening the station is unlikely in this post 9-11 climate.

October 27, 2004 05:08 PM in History, Transportology

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