#new york transit museum

[thisislizheather]

Abandoned City Hall Station

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

I have waited for this day my whole New York life.

Above Photo: Postcard of City Hall Station in 1913

I finally got to go on a tour of the old, abandoned City Hall Station beneath NYC. Everyone has heard about it. The only glimpse you can get of it is when you stay on the downtown 6 train and look out the window as it loops around to become an uptown train.

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

The station opened in 1904 and it’s located right underneath City Hall Park and from certain areas in the park (that are now blocked off to the public), you can look down and see through the tops of the skylights in the station.

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

It closed in 1945 due to the increased subway ridership that led to longer trains, and thus longer platforms. The City Hall station (built on a tight curve) would have been difficult to lengthen, and it was also fairly close to the far busier Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station so the closure made sense at the time.

SIDE NOTE: I feel like I’m slowly realizing this in real time, but like… am I… into… history? When the hell did that happen?

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

The station was designed by Rafael Guastavino and is so unexpectedly refined for a subway station with its Romanesque Revival architectural style. (Yes I looked up what the name of the style is.)

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

Tours are arranged through the New York Transit Museum (you have to become a member for access to ticket sales), but it’s very much worth the price. Tickets go on sale usually twice a year for different blocks of time and absolutely always sell out.

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

This is, by far, one of the coolest things that you can see in New York. Equally as incredible as it was to walk around inside the crown of The Statue of Liberty.

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

It really did feel like walking into a time machine that shows you what old New York City would’ve felt like. Just an incredible experience.

Above Photo: City Hall Station, April 2023

I know that I only bought my New York Transit Museum membership solely for this tour, but of all the clubs to become a member to - this one really feels like a good fit for me. So excited to hear about what other tours will be offered throughout the year.

[sumorenitabella]

Kids having fun on the bus

[0x4468c7a6a728]

time to step up the trainposting, here's a picture from when i was in new york city for about 6 hours and saw a dumpster train in the subway!

[hooliganists]

Museum Highlight- New York Transit Museum

To set the mood, the New York Transit Museum is located in a defunct train station- and you can tell. Although your GPS will lead you to the front doors of a building, follow the signs around the corner to the nearby subway stairs- this is the entrance to the museum! Tickets are checked upon entering, but they can be purchased at a teller’s booth if needed for $10 per adult or $5 per child-…

[transit-fag]

Okay so I decided to generate a random zip code in the US and rate the transit in it, I got 07042 which is in Montclair, NJ.

The zip code covers the southern half of Montclair and much of the historic center of the town. It is home to 3 stops on the Montclair-Boonton Line which connects the city to New York, Hoboken and Boonton. It additionally has several bus lines in the city and out to other parts of New Jersey

There is decent density and walkability around the Bay and Walnut street stops but the Watchung Avenue stop is in a rather suburban area.

Overall with 3 stops in a roughly 3k acres, it has rather good walkability and transit access, as well as an art museum, I would give Montclair a solid 7/10

Zip code was generated here

[mothcub]

Here's some of my favourite things from the New York Transit Museum 🚃

1. Cat driver. My favourite character. 2. Incredible TMNT art by Joshua Romollie. 3. Getting to "drive the bus". 4. Learning about Elizabeth Jennings and the horrible phrasing of that Brooklyn Circuit Court ruling. 5. This cute omnibus model. 6. A beautiful 1984 poster celebrating 50 years of public housing in the USA.

[klapollo]

hello everyone it's girl scout cookie season once again so i want to remind you all that if you dont have a scout in your life you're supporting, troop 6000 in new york city is composed of young girls living in the shelter system coupled with an initiative to help the girls transition to permanent housing. proceeds from their cookies will help the girls engage in enriching activities with the organization, including camping and badge activities.

when i was a scout i got the opportunity to not only socialize with my friends and have a place to go and have fun after school, but i was able to experience unique things like nature walks and museum trips. girl scouts does a lot, and i imagine it means the world for kids enduring the pain of housing insecurity.

you can purchase cookies from the troop here

[1863-project]

The New York Transit Museum runs some of their vintage fleet on Saturdays in December. It's great to take the old Arnines for a ride. You'll get knocked around more than you would on the modern cars, but that's part of the fun!

Anyway. There you go.

[writer-at-the-table]

Marriage Contract by Ben Shahn, 1961, Ink, watercolor, paint, and graphite on paper

Most decorated Jewish marriage contracts use ornamental motifs as framing devices for their written Aramaic text. Ben Shahn's Ketubbah is a marked departure from this model. In the superb execution of this document, the artist has integrated floral and foliate decorations within his lyrical Hebrew calligraphy, the predominant design element.

While Shahn's artistic personality emerged through the religious themes in his illustrations for the 1931 Haggadah for Passover, he would not return to such subjects for many years. The artist spent most of the 1930s and 1940s as a social realist painter. Along with so many other painters and sculptors during those difficult years, Shahn felt that art could help right the inequities of society. His terse visual commentaries on such topical subjects as the Sacco and Vanzetti case, Nazism, poverty, and labor problems brought him great recognition as both a humanitarian and an artist. It was after World War II that he turned inward through what has been called his transition from social to personal realism. During this period he incorporated allegory and religious and philosophical symbolism in his work, often based on his own cultural heritage.

Shahn's updating of the traditional ketubbah results from his changing stylistic and subjective concerns. He became fascinated with letters, both Hebrew and English, which became essential elements in his work. This calligraphic preoccupation led to his 1954 illustrations for The Alphabet of Creation, a book which related a parable of the origin of the Hebrew alphabet. His own combination of these twenty-two letters become a personal stamp and appears on most of his prints and drawings after 1960, including this Ketubbah.

Like the butterfly stamp of James Whistler and the Japonist monogram of Toulouse-Lautrec, this symbol shows Shahn's stylistic inspiration as coming from outside mainstream Western culture. The expressive style of Shahn's Hebrew characters changes with the meaning of each theme he depicts. For this Ketubbah, which is presented at the joyous celebration of marriage, he develops a commanding but elegant Hebrew appropriate to the legal nature of the document and the solemnity of the moment-a calligraphy markedly different from the flame-like evanescences in his tribute to the Feast of Lights, Hanukkah. As had been the custom of Hebrew scribes throughout the ages, Shahn adds eccentric elements to certain letters. Most notable here is the oft-repeated, stylized Star of David.

Shahn's meandering floral and foliate forms refer to Psalm 128:3, a common visual allusion in Jewish marriage contracts: "Thy wife is a fruitful vine in the midst of thy house, thy children are as young olive trees set around thy table." (Kleeblatt, Norman L., and Vivian B. Mann. TREASURES OF THE JEWISH MUSEUM. New York: Universe Books, 1986, pp. 192-193.)

[copperbadge]

Hi Mr Starbuck! Some friends and I are moving in a few months and we're eyeing various places all over the US. Chicago came up as a relatively affordable big city (compared to LA and NYC) and I have to ask the resident Tumblr Chicagoan his opinion. As a resident who lives and works in the windy city, what's your big pros and cons of residing there (especially things you might not encounter as a tourist)? (also, how accurate is your "guide to chicago" still, since its been a few years!)

Well, I definitely have opinions!

The guide to Chicago is no longer accurate -- too many places have closed or moved, and the pandemic altered a lot (for example the Money Museum still exists but I'm not sure if it has regular hours even now). I should do a new one but like, I really don't get out much anymore so I can't talk about restaurants outside of a VERY local area, and I never could talk much about hotels, which just leaves points of interest mostly already covered by Atlas Obscura. :D At this point it'd just be kind of moot, others are doing it better than I am.

Chicago is inexpensive compared to New York or Los Angeles, but like, that's everywhere in America. Chicago is still a quite pricey city to live in, mainly because the taxes are so high -- 10.25% sales tax, for example, and my property taxes are also pretty steep. People joke about Taxachusetts, but I'm pretty sure Chicago at least has it beat (and 2/3 of the state's population lives in Chicago or the outlying suburbs). Housing is not at a premium in the way it is in NY and LA but depending on where you want to live and how far you want to commute it can still be very expensive. My housing was never less than half of my monthly income until I bought this place, and then ONLY because the job I'm in now came with a $10K/yr raise from my last one.

Chicago does have great culture, great museums, great food, and it's a liberal island in a pretty conservative region. It is however quite segregated, so if you are any race other than white, living here can get a little more complicated than I've portrayed it as a white dude. There is significant crime and particularly gun crime, but it's generally confined to specific regions of the city. That said, even if you discount crime, the Chicago PD are corrupt as fuck and uninterested in being helpful, so if you are from a demographic the cops enjoy harassing, it will not be different here.

I do love the city, warts and all. I like the water, I like the people, I like the midwestern vibe. I'd find it very hard to leave, especially because I have a network of friends here, but also because I just plain like it and I know it really well. There is a very short list of cities I'd consider leaving Chicago for, and most of those would have to have a well-paying job waiting for me. But it did take me time to fall in love with it -- it took a few years before it felt like home.

It's a little difficult to get more specific without knowing more about your situation -- what you do for work, what your budget is like, what your goals are in leaving where you are. Do you prefer to drive most places? (Parking and traffic can both get dicey.) Can you tolerate taking public transit if driving is inconvenient? Is the industry in which you work something that has a lot of openings here? Do you want to live in an urban environment, and if so are you prepared to live in a likely somewhat shitty apartment to do so? If you prefer to live in a house, are you prepared for a long commute? What do you like to do for fun and is there a thriving culture for that here? What is it important to have access to -- museums, concerts, theater, sport? Where do you need to travel to regularly (ie, I go to Austin several times a year) and how do you prefer to travel there?

Anyway, yeah -- like, I love it but I have few illusions about it. If you want to chat further feel free to hit me up by email, happy to answer more specific questions!

[stevebattle]

Metro Man (1983), MTA Metro-North Railroad, New York. The MTA Metro-North Railroad "has had several public safety initiatives over the years, including the friendly robot “Metro Man.” Metro Man joined the Metro-North staff in 1983, and was originally sent into communities on the northern portion of the Harlem Line to teach children about the difference between diesel service and third rail power. Eventually his territory included Metro-North’s entire service area and his talks covered a broad range of safety issues. Metro Man is still on staff at Metro-North, but is now portrayed by a human in a robot suit. Vintage Metro Man is shown in this … poster and these photographs from 1983 and 1991 which show Metro Man as a teaching tool in elementary school classrooms." – NY Transit Museum.

[guppyfish77]

Another year Another summary of Art! An Entire Year of Submas lets gooooooooooo!!!! This year I feel like I really pushed myself when it comes to illustrations and I feel like I've learned a lot! But at the same time I feel a little tired, next year I think I wanna relax and experiment a bit more, I gotta learn to loosen up! Might get more art out if I do :p

I also feel the Submas grip ever so lightly relaxing (unless they decide to do Unova remakes haha XD), so I might introduce some of my numerous ocs in 2024! I'll probably start with the conductor oc ;]

Thank you for all your support! (you are all very nice! ToT), I still have a good amount of submas stuff planned in the works so look forward to that (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

If you are interested, I also have some commentary and behind the scenes for some of my submas illustrations! I wanna talk about it and now seems like a good time to do so now that the year is over! (Beware! its going to be long!)

All titles are linked to the original post

Lunch Break

hoho! This one is the sort of AU thing in which the only thing that changes is that I give Emmet a Victini friend (not a part of his team, I dubbed them the "victory duo" because Emmet likes winning and Victini is the Victory Pokemon), I planned out a few wordless comics regarding the idea, they were all very lighthearted slice of life kind of stuff, usually Victini causing some mischief and the brothers having to deal with it

and here's the thumbnails for this piece! I played around with various angles but decided to keep it simple and choose a straight on angle. It was originally a snack break and Emmet sharing a granola bar with Victini, but as I was planning it, submas unexpectedly showed up in the Pokemon Anime where they were serving ekiben, after learning about it it quickly turned into a lunch break! (how fun when new information lines up with an art piece you are working on hoho! ^ ^) After studying what foods Ekiben usually have in them (there was quite a variety!) I took what I learned and try to make the food look like the gear station logo :D

In the background there are children drawings because in the battle subway one of the trainer classes you can face off against are preschoolers, and I thought at least one of them would share their drawings with the subway bosses (and of course why wouldn't they hang it up?), there is also a trophy in which you can get in the players room if you beat the subway bosses on the super trains (one day, battling competitively is not my forte), I did my best to make Emmet's office feel lived in by adding a little bit of clutter (like adding a note) but overall very organized

(hey hey that joltik mug looks familiar in the corner there, its the same one Rei is holding in the christmas drawing)

Bonus Emmet and Victini Drawings

aw come on dude, not on the trains!

ah this one, it gave me quite a bit of frustration! This piece I used to challenge myself on perspective, and challenge me it did! The version you see now is I believe the 6th iteration of this drawing! The reason for restarting so many times is because I originally wanted it to be in 3 point perspective, but I couldn't get it to look right so its now in 2 point... Haha Some valuable lessons learned there!

This illustration was inspired by the history of New York Subway Trains and Graffiti! I read about it when I got to visit the New York Transit Museum and found it super interesting!! Then I went I gotta do something with this! Since Unova is based in New York after all!

I got so many subway surfer comments, they don’t know I forgot subway surfers existed while making this and that I am a huge nerd lmao

I had a lot of fun designing the graffiti on the train (yes it says among us) stylizing the fictional letters was so fun! I studied some graffiti to see how they do it, I could've pushed the graffiti style more but then it would be illegible! I also mixed in elements of Grafaiai graffiti, and trainer that is running away is the artist trainer class in SCVL because they are graffiti artists! And the train that got graffitied is the Wifi Train, due to BW (and the DS) servers being shut down, I doubt that train gets used much anymore, which makes it a perfect target!

Derailed!

hohoho! This was a fun one! I'm not sure how many of you guys read my tags, but in there I did state that this piece was based off the fact that model trains are powered by electrifying the rail it runs on (very low watts mind you) and the fact that Joltik eats electricity, but thats not the only inspiration, it was also inspired by those videos of cats laying on the layout and derailing the train!

Theres quite a variety of thumbnails for this idea (including a comic!), and the idea was there in 2022, but this year I decided to fully commit to it! I started rendering the top right one and almost finished it, but it felt really boring to me, so I switched it up and made some thumbnails in a new perspective and viola! thats what ended up being finished!

The train that is being derailed are Sanriku Railway Type 36s, based off a model train I have in my collection! (While sharing this fact on the original post Haiku Bot detected it as a Haiku?! and this art went out of my target audience, that certainly was a day (⊙□⊙;))

Also I straight up put a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine in the background, I'm not sure if people noticed cuz its quite blurry, the fact that nobody said anything means I probably would’ve gotten away with it before sharing this fact, so hehe :3c

Unexplained Melancholy

eyy! this one! It started out wholly different

It was originally me dropping Warden Ingo in various natural landscapes around Hisui as I didn't feel like drawing anymore linear perspective (ah, but heres the thing, all environments require a little bit of perspective lol), and it was just going to be Warden Ingo hanging out in a lush forest, specifically by the train rock that was shown in his concept art! but after sitting on it, I realized I could do something more with it! by making it a snowy environment I could make callbacks to Emmet's coat being white! hence the "SNOWY!!!" being scribbled there, that was added like weeks afterwards, Then I realized I could push it even more by making the whole environment about Emmet's colors! So the new thumbnail is in color because thats whats its about!

The moon smile thing was stumbled on by complete accident, while working on it it felt empty there and I added Emmet's smile to fill the space before going "moon!!!"

The piece is also a sort of a parallel to last years piece “I am Emmet, I wish for Ingo and I to be a two-car train once more” composition wise, sort of, I tried to at least 👍

Black Tower and Whitetree Hollow

Ah! I was quite proud of this one! Black City and White Forest are some of my favorite places in Unova mainly because the parallels are so very cool!

As the thumbnails suggest it was all going to be in complete black and white, as I was working on it though I could not help but add some values in there so yup! I quite like both compositions but the perspective won me out, plus that one focuses more on the characters than the other one (as much as I love backgrounds, it really is supposed to be about Emmet and Ingo U_U)

Being places of duality and having a battle challenge in there, it really fit them!

Emmet drops the hottest single of all time 🔥🔥🔥

Not really much to say about this one since it was very much done on a whim, but

its not the first time I drew Emmet with his hat backwards, I did this little doodle around the same time I did the train graffiti piece, been wanting to do something with this silly idea, and when I heard that audio, I went :o

Following Some Rumors of a Time Machine

the finale! I decided to choose Area Zero because its a very cool place! I am inspired by cool places! and I decided to give it my all for this one!

The thumbnail I made was more for jotting down the idea, and the landscape was going to be more eyelevel? Later I decided to make it so you were looking down into the crater and you get to see the fog blocking the crystal caverns, to show that Emmet was going deeper into Area Zero and the Deepest part is his destination (the time machine, not the underdepths, I didn't know about that yet haha!) I was always going to make Emmet encounter a Slither Wing, with it being based off Volcarona, a gen 5 pokemon :]

Anyways, That's all I have to say! I hope you found it interesting! (and enjoyed my varying quality in sketches and thumbnails XD) Thanks for listening! see you in 2024! ✌

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The Subway Sun, Vol XXV, No. 16, 1958. Illustration by Amelia Opdyke Jones ("Oppy").

Photo: New York Transit Museum via Bloomberg

[0x4468c7a6a728]

here's some pictures i took at the new york transit museum when i went last year

+ bonus dumpster train

[retropopcult]

110th Street Station on the Lenox Line, 1943. Young boys with a Hershey chocolates vending machine, next to a scale and peanut machine. A New York Transit Museum Photo.

From the Facebook group New York City Images: 1850-1980

[slaygentford]

I feel like I have to tell everyone because I just heard it but Corrine Bailey Rae of girls put your records on fame has this incredible experimental jazz/ psychedelic/ rock/ synth/ album called Black Rainbows, that’s about this museum of preserved black ephemera in Chicago. It’s wild. It’s like Alice Coltrane and black Riot Girrrls made a weird baby that casts spells.

THIS SOUNDS AMZINGGGGGGGGG listening rn ty for this rec. publishing so everyone gets the rec .... New York transit queen is sooooooooooooo....