Discovering the New York Transit Museum

Underneath 99 Schermherhorn Street down two flights of stairs lies the New York Transit Museum. It is home to many vintage subway cars, maps, and tools that tell the history of the New York City subway system. Visitors can walk through vintage subway cars, and marvel at how different each one looks. “Stepping into this museum felt like traveling back in time – walking through the very history of how the New York City subway was built,” said William Kimmey, a visitor of the museum. 

The New York Transit Museum, celebrating its 50th anniversary, was born from an abandoned subway station on Court Street, a busy street in downtown Brooklyn. Before it became a museum, the Court Street subway station was in service from 1936-1946. The station was served by the HH (double H) shuttle, which ran between Court Street and Hoyt-Schermerhorn. It closed in 1946 because of low ridership. For three decades, Court Street was a ghost station. It sat quietly underground, its platforms collecting dust and its air growing musty. 

Then in early 1976, a group of transit employees decided to resurrect the abandoned station and came up with the idea of the museum as part of the U.S. Bicentennial Celebration. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) reopened the Court Street station as the New York City Transit Exhibition. The exhibition was designed to show off the city’s rich public transportation history to New Yorkers and visitors. Originally they thought it would be a temporary installation. But the New York City Transit Exhibition was a hit with native New Yorkers. Over the course of several decades, the exhibit expanded into what we know as the New York Transit Museum.

Inside a vintage NYC subway car. Photo by Leon Samdani

 “Love that you can go inside old train cars and the gift shop. I like that you can see the evolution of train cars throughout the years. It’s a very interesting museum, you can easily spend 1 hour to 1.5 hours here and the entrance is so cool,” said Jaimie R., a New Yorker who takes people on tours of the museum. 

On the lower level, the vintage fleet of subway cars is the highlight of the museum. You can find the original subway car, the Arnines (R1-R9 models), the Redbirds, and the R110B, a prototype train with modernized features that was added to the fleet of trains we have today. Their doors  remain open and the cars are well-lit to allow visitors to enter and exit any time. “Moving through the decommissioned subway cars, you can almost hear the echoes of conversations, the footsteps, and the restless hustle of a city in motion,” said William Kimmey.

In addition to the trains, older subway maps let you trace the way New York City (NYC) subway routes have changed over the century.

If you’d like to visit the museum, it is open from 10am to 4pm on Wednesday-Sunday. You can get there by taking the subway or bus. For example, the 2, 3, 4, 5, and R trains stop at the Borough Hall station, a four minute walk away from the NY Transit Museum. Admission fees vary: adults are charged $10, while children, seniors, and visitors with disabilities are charged $5. Museum members and MTA employees can enter the museum free of charge.