Transit Museum celebrates subway system’s 110th birthday
The Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn celebrated the 110th birthday of the New York City subway system on Saturday with music, food, kid-friendly workshops, a special cake and a ride on a vintage-1932 subway train.
The museum is located within the former Court Street station of the long-defunct Court Street Shuttle, on Schermerhorn Street between Court Street and Boerum Place. Guests enter through what was once one of that station’s entrances and walk down a flight of stairs past a “token booth” that’s now purely decorative.
The city’s first subway line, from 145th Street to City Hall in Manhattan, opened on Oct. 27, 1904. Parts of that original line have been incorporated into the “lettered-train” system. The subway reached Brooklyn in 1908, and new lines soon followed.
At the museum kids had fun drawing with crayons, putting together train layouts from a wooden kit and more. Meanwhile, musicians Lloyd H. Miller and Chris Johnson, of the children’s band the Deedle Deedle Dees, entertained the crowd. One song, “Brooklyn by Bike,” took a musical trip from Prospect Park to Coney Island. Another, “Nellie Bly,” informed the kids about different modes of transit. It mentioned airplanes, buses and minivans before it told them that the real Nellie Bly made her 1889 trip around the world by boat. A third song, “Battle of Brooklyn,” described the Revolutionary War battle that took place in and around Park Slope.