SIGHT: The old City Hall subway station

Many New Yorkers know that if you stay on the downtown 6 train past the last stop, Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall, which you are not really supposed to do, you can catch a glimpse of the former City Hall subway station out the right-side windows. This station was in operation from 1904 to 1945, as the southern terminus of the IRT, New York’s first subway line. As the train makes a 180-degree turn to head back uptown, there is a flash of Guastavino tilework, a mysterious staircase leading to a hidden chamber, vaulted ceilings with skylights, and was that a chandelier?

Too late! With a screech of the brakes, the train rounds the loop and you are back in 2025. But if you become a member of the New York Transit Museum, and await a certain email, and get online at certain day and time, you can buy a ticket to a special train departing from Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall, with a single door that will let you out into this station, sort of like “platform nine and three-quarters” in Harry Potter. One brisk winter morning, I met the select group of lucky explorers in City Hall Park. We were, of course, eager to get belowground, but the bulk of the tour took place aboveground, moving around the cirumference of City Hall Park, learning about the evolution of the New York City subway system, beginning the “Beach Pneumatic Tube,” right below where we stood, which was in operation for three years, from 1870 to 1873. Our guide told us that the station once boasted a fountain with a goldfish pond, a live pianist, paintings, and Oriental rugs. Though this train traveled only one block, and did not go anywhere near a beach, it had almost half a million excited riders in its single year of operation. We saw City Hall Station’s former skylights, in the middle of a garden in City Hall Park, now covered with concrete slabs and dry leaves.

Finally we descended into the subway through the regular entrance. Outside, a man was selling paintings of the Statue of Liberty from a folding cart. Even as we passed through the turnstiles with their signature ka-chink, it felt like we were going somewhere different from everyone else, somewhere secret and slightly forbidden.

We waited on the regular platform, where the modern burgundy and forest green tiles foreshadowed sights to come. The station features three types of signage in three different fonts: City Hall, Brooklyn Bridge, and a “BB” logo, for Brooklyn Bridge, almost like a stamp in sealing wax.

A 6 train pulled into the station, and the conductor’s voice chirped, “This is the last stop on this train. Everybody, please get off.” The exiting passengers furrowed their brows as our group boarded. But there is power in numbers, and as the doors closed, our train transformed into a special shuttle to a hundred years ago. In just a few moments, we had pulled up to the City Hall platform. Because the platform is curved, there is a big gap between the cars and the platform, which is one of the reasons the station was discontinued. The original trains were only five cars long, which filled the platform, and featured doors only at the front and back, where the contact points are tightest. Today’s subway cars are too long, and the gap is too wide in the center.

We exited through a rear door across a metal bridge and paused for a moment to take in the glory of the space. It was silent and still, paused in time. Dust motes danced in the sunbeams that filtered through the broken skylights.

It was evident that at the turn of the twentieth century, this subway station was justifiably the jewel in the crown of the New York City transportation system. The designers of the station, renowned architects George Heins and Christopher LaFarge, chose muted shades of red, green, and cream Guastavino tiles, the combination of which was thought to be easy on the eyes.

Timbrel vaulting—a sort of tile sandwich of thin terracotta tiles bonded with mortar—was Rafel Gustavino’s design, as well as the tiles
in the herringbone design in the ceiling. It was used to support the station’s soaring arches, which were influenced by Gustavino’s work on the great dome of the crossing at the Cathedral of St John the Divine. The station was once referred to as “the chapel in the round,” perhaps because of the architects and artisans who worked on both the station and the cathedral.

The ceiling was a palimpsest of leaded-glass skylights with glass sidewalk bricks above. Many of the windows had been covered with tar for wartime blackouts. All the textures created an abstract chiaroscuro, as we gazed up from the past through to the present and the unwitting passersby on the streets above.

At the center of the platform, a staircase led to a mezzanine room known as “the Control House.” An ornate oak ticket booth once sat here, and the fare was five cents.

Off to the side, a modern staircase with handrails led up to the street, now paved over.

But it wasn’t hard to imagine some of the more glamorous members of our group descending to the City Hall cathedral on opening day, dressed for the event, yet nevertheless hesitant about going underground to ride trains through tunnels—hence the emphasis on making the early stations attractive and welcoming. It would have been hard for those prospective commuters to imagine today’s subway, where part of the charm is the variety of its passengers’ sartorial choices (including, once a year, a flash mob of pants-less riders), or the quite different reasons one might be hesitant to board a train. Still, it would not be unusual for a modern subway rider to witness a live pianist on the platform, rolled Oriental rugs from Craigslist being squeezed though subway doors, or a prize goldfish from Coney Island in a plastic bag on a child’s lap. And there are myriad reasons, of course, why one might be hesitant to board a train. But if the glory of the subway system was in its novelty and glamour, today it remains, arguably, in its quintessential New York–ness, from the high to the low.

For more information on tours of City Hall Station, see the New York Transit Museum website.