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 its 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 when the New York Transit Museum began offering tours to its members.
This great vintage photograph shows the City Hall station under construction, shortly before opening in 1904.
via r/nycpics
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