You may recognize the City Hall Station above, but probably not from riding the Subway. The IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) City Hall Station was the very first Subway station in NYC. It opened to great fanfare as it allowed people to get from Lower Manhattan all the way uptown in minutes for the first time.
Over time, the next station on the line — the Brooklyn Bridge station, only 600ft away — became more popular due to it’s several transfer opportunities and longer boarding areas. Eventually the ridership at this station dropped to a mere couple hundred a day, and thus it was closed down and abandoned until 2004.
It has appeared on dozens of movies since, most notably the Matrix series where Neo was stuck waiting for the subway for eons.
The photo above is a fantastic view of the City Hall Station under construction in 1904. For more photos of the full station as it appears today, please check out a ton of photos from my visit to the abandoned station this past summer here.
via reddit
Matt Coneybeare
Editor in Chief
Matt enjoys exploring the City's with his partner and son. He is an avid marathon runner, and spends most of his time eating, running, and working on cool stuff.
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