Happy 120th, NYC Subway!

Happy 120th, NYC Subway!

The New York City Subway celebrates its 120th birthday this year and the [IRT] Lexington Avenue Line 33rd Street Station was part of the original system that opened in October, 1904. While lighting has been modernized for a brighter ambiance, along with yellow platform-edge safety strips and other improvements, it maintains the classy appearance of that proud new turn-of-the-(20th)century public transport wonder.

While, as a Subway-besotted photog, I find more stimulation shooting in expansive multilevel underground complexes serving multiple lines, (*) or capturing the interplay of elevated lines and their varieties of neighborhoods, (**) this is an inviting, "comfort food" sort of station for me, as it has been my mainly "home" station since 2017, whenever staying nearby at the Roger or, more recently, its luxe re-imagined AKA NoMad at Madison and E 31st. So many photo-rich trips start and end here, it's like an old friend. And the strong connection with the Subway's roots makes it even more special.

When the Subway opened, trains called here on their way up the East Side from City Hall, swung left to scoot under 42nd St (present route of the Grand Central-Times Square Shuttle) and then curved right to follow Broadway up the West Side. The IRT would later take the form of an 'H' as the Lexington Avenue Line got extended north beyond 42nd and the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line Would connect Times Square with South Ferry at the southern tip of Manhattan.

In addition to loving the mosaics and other original ornamentations preserved here, I always enjoy watching the express (4 and 5) trains flashing by on the two inside tracks, across from the local platforms. I actually wondered why they seemed to be headed for a "lower level" - until I realized it was just the opposite of the "illusion" I was observing, as the Subway designers actually placed stations such as this one on a slight up-grade to aid trains in stopping as well as allowing speed to build more easily, down-hill on departure, all the while having the inside express tracks run "level."

While the 33rd Street Station hasn't changed all that much, it did this time stimulate some new photographic possibilities as I turned my recently acquired ultra-wide Irix Blackstone 11mm f/4 ultra-wide lens loose on its early Subway evocative ambiance. Here, late one October evening, a Brooklyn Bridge-bound 6 Local train of R62-type railcars calls at the Downtown platform.

©2024 Steve Ember
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