When I first saw the Transit Museum in the Syllabus I was pretty surprised to be a New Yorker all my life and not have even heard of it. I even thought to myself, why would I need a museum of something I see everyday?! Boy, did my mind change when we arrived there. It is perhaps the most original museum since it takes place in an actual abandoned train stop, you walk down the steps and you have entered the station. The station was originally the Court Street station in Brooklyn before it was abandoned and then turned into The Transit Museum. There was a feeling of nostalgia for me since a lot of the old equipment are displayed here and it reminded me of getting on the train with my mom when I was a kid and still using tokens. The highlight of going anywhere was being the one to insert the token. Below follows a picture of a turnstop to enter the MTA, I am not sure the year it was used since there wasn’t information but I can say its pretty old since I’ve never seen it before!
With technology moving so quick, we are still outdated! While I was in Greece last year their system seemed a lot more advanced technologically. As you can see below more subway turnstops and payment method, just now in 2019 the MTA is trying to install a digital system at all the stations, even though we don’t know how it will work yet since they are not up and running. It makes me think of where all the money millions of rider spend are being allocated. We are desperately outdated and any implementation of technology takes what feels like forever!
After making our way downstairs to see the fleets of retired trains, in one of the trains we saw an ad for the World’s Fair of 1964 and the reason I know that is because the writing states “Only 20 minutes away from Times Square”, making it clear that it can only be the World’s Fair of 1964 that was brought to life by the help of the one and only, Robert Moses. While reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro, I decided to watch some interviews by Robert Caro and coincidentally there is an interview where Caro says he was at the World’s Fair of 1964 to catch Robert Moses make a speech (Robert Moses barely spoke to the public) and Robert Moses stated “New Yorkers will be forever ungrateful for everything I have done for New York”. And although Moses’ nature ran by ego and arrogance, he might be right about that exact line. We still enjoy Corona Park today but I’m not quite sure people are exactly “grateful” or even happy about much Robert Moses has done for New York.
The Transit Museum isn’t huge but as you can see every inch is used up wisely. NYC buses are a staple of New York and also how a lot of the population travels. It was pretty awesome to be able to see the different buses, and to see together the evolution of the design of NYC buses. The bus you see on the second picture below was open where you could sit on the driver’s seat and experiment how it felt to be a bus driver! This is a great place to bring kids since they could walk around and touch things freely.
Lastly, I always try to find something about women in our visits since I always come across overwhelming amounts of masculinity spotlight and below is a picture of the coats the women used to wear on the subway and buses in NYC during the 1950’s. The picture under shows the rest of the exhibit that touched on women and the highlight was Ruth Dilts and Pat Regan, who were among the first six women to serve as Hostess-Secretaries on the New York Central 20th Century Limited, an express passenger train. They were hired in 1956 to replace male secretaries on the 16-hour trip between New York and Chicago. Their duties were registering passengers, performing standard secretarial work like typing and placing radio-telephone calls from the train, sending telegraphs, seeing to the safety and comfort of the passengers. They were referred to as “Girls of the Century.”
Thank you for riding the MTA with me today!
See you next week,
xoxo,
P
https://www.topviewnyc.com/packages/history-of-the-new-york-city-subway