New York’s Lost Subway Entrances 

There is more stations out there like the Sedwyck Ave, Anderson Ave/ Jermone Ave, Gunhill Rd lower level of the old 3rd Ave/ 9th Ave Els. The old South Ferry station and shuttle. Time Square lower level of 8th Ave IND lines.

When I was growing up, in the 1960s and '70s (and I guess you could count the early '80s), I had family in NYC, and we would visit 2-3 times each year. My father, who was born and raised in NYC, always took us on outings, and we nearly always took the subway. I remember using some of these doors that went directly from various buildings into the subway. Dad seemed to know every single one of them that was still in service, and showing us these was, of course, part of the treat. I went to college in NYC in 1982, I went looking for those entrances, but found only a few still in service. I don't remember which ones I found still in service. I do remember finding plenty that had been permanently locked, but weren't yet sealed off or bricked over. When I asked people about them, I was told they had been locked because of crime. (I think the same was true of the subway station bathrooms by that time.)

This is the main reason I love this channnel. I love finding out about hidden gems like this 😎

If you take the 6 train to the last stop at Brooklyn Bridge City Hall and stay on the train (The train crew are usually cool with it) you can ride through the abandoned City Hall station as the train does its turn around. Very Cool!!! Also, as recent as the 90’s, there was an entrance to A&S (Now Macy’s) directly off the platform at Hoyt St. Fulton Mall Station on the 2/3 . Just get off the train, walk through the turnstile and you were in the store.

Funfact - 59th street station was the first one to be finished and contained temporary walls of all of the proposed station designs. It was found in the mid 2000s during construction (I was there for it!) and some of them are currently displayed on the Uptown side. City Hall was one of the last to be finished iirc. Funfact - someone got pickpocketed on the first day of opening in the City Hall station. 1:17 Station cut and cover methods, while nearby residents complained of noise and soot, didn't impede traffic at all according to IRT. 1:28 They didn't get the lease after 1904, rather before then. Commission for contract 1 (the original IRT subway line) was bid and won by John McDonald and August Belmont Jr. in 1900 for construction of the Subway and a 50 year operating lease. Belmont started IRT in 1902 and made it the operating company for Contract 1 (and subsequently Contract 2). 2:15 Heins & LaFarge, who were commissioned to design buildings (kiosks, station entrances like the old 72nd street entrance) and stations made these kiosks visually different - Entrances have a dome like top, exits have a pyramid top. 2:22 Stations had ticket choppers first. They then had booths to make things more efficient. 2:26 This is no joke, the beams and stuff in the "tunnel" were white! They took station designs parellel to the station itself. 2:31 NYC started IND but didn't make it too obvious, apparently. NYC then started to force IRT and BMT to increase their fares while keeping IND fares low, opened IND stations close to IRT and BMT stations so that way people would use IND train lines instead, and other other sneaky crap. Considering ridership lessened and IRT and BMT became strapped for cash, NYC (bought?) got their greedy hands on IRT and BMT, incorporated them and IND into Transit Authority or whatever MTA was initially called.

These lost entrances seem like hidden areas in games that contain extra items or artifacts that you need to get 100% or to proceed forward.

I got to tour the Woolworth Building a few years ago. It actually has two abandoned subway entrances once accessible through the basement elevator lobby where the bike rack is today. One is still extant and leads to the Park Place station near the World Trade Center. This has been closed since 9/11 (indeed, two bikes still chained to the bike rack have gone unclaimed since then). The entrance to the other passageway has been completely drywalled over on the Woolworth side and partially demolished for underground parking structures. It once lead to the City Hall station one block north.

I work in an office building with direct access to the 4-5-6 lines via an entrance in the lobby. It's nice being able to go directly from subway to office without going outside.

There's just something about the phrase "the tunnel was bricked closed in the 40's". that makes me want to see what's on the other side. A lot of these are still open with just a single wall blocking passage, but a few of these are more like they just made sealed time capsules and I desperately want to drill a hole in a wall and take a peak There are videos of people taking the ride around the loop at city hall station. the problem is that cars got so long that, while they physically fit around the corner, they are uncomfortably close on the inside edge, and there's 3+ feet of void between the doors and the platform

Fascinating history of the NYC subway that deserves a full-fledged documentary. One with interviews with residents who used these long forgotten parts of the subway. I want to know so many more details and with pictures, and even any archival film footage. I wouldn't be surprised if people had personal film and photos of the subway. My dad carried his film and 8mm cameras with him everytime our family did a trip locally or on a road trip in California. I'm sure people did that in NYC, too.

There's a blocked off underground tunnel @149st on the 2 and 5 train line in the Bronx, it was so pasassagers to cross over to the other side without needing to go up to the street level and deal with crossing the heavy traffic on 149th & 3rd Ave. I believe the MTA closed the tunnel in the late 80's early 90's. Also @ 149th and grand concourse on the 2&5 line by the stairway at the front of the station there was an elevator people used to use to get to the upper level to the 4 train line in the Bronx.

It's kind of weird some of them are/were closed. Like, condos with subway access sounds like a no brainer. Same thing with dorms/offices, you'd think they would WANT access to the subway at all times.

Oh hey. Interesting topic actually. I love abandoned and forgotten stuff, especially old railways.

A lot of those could be used as emergency shelters or many other things. Oh well. Great for Superman and Batman movies!

There was one such entrance in the basement of the old Woolworth's on Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, Queens.

Seems to me all those closed and forgotten places in the subway should be reopened as historical sites. Lots of people would love to see them.

When the teenage mutant ninja turtles found the abandoned NYC subway station to use as their lair, in the live action movie, I remember thinking the idea of living in an abandoned subway station under a big city was just about the coolest thing in the world. Of course I was too young to appreciate that people with addictions, mental disabilities, or other problems, actually do live in such places, and it's tragic. A decade later, in the early 2000s, I was living in Milwaukee for college, and exploring abandoments there.

The (Herald Square?) pathway between 6+7th Avenue under the Manhattan Mall is pretty cool (and creepy). fallen ceilings, loose tiles, and lots of spider webs! I walked it with 3 flashlights about 10 years ago, there was an abandoned shoe store and a barber shop and a couple of other stores.

Being a former train operator in the MTA, so appreciative that I had an opportunity to visit these long forgotten places in history.

Im obsessed with figuring out what stations have things like covered up under/overpasses, exits/entrances, or staircases, its fun if you pay attention to out of place tiles or concrete and do some research

I remember walking that Gimbel’s passageway in the early 70’s. It was scary.

Chambers St is much still opened...half as large as it used to be ...the station itself is also the basement of the Municipal Building, which also explains why it looks like hot dookie now

The Chambers Street station is still open. It's so decrepit that it looks like it was closed.

There was also a direct entrance from the IRT subway in downtown Brooklyn to the lower level the the A&S department store (now Macys). I can remember seeing train go by through the glass doors.

Every subway fan should pay a visit to the transit museum. It got detailed history of the system and, real 1900s train cars that will definitely bring you back into the age

My favorite is a Duane Reade in Times Square. You leave through the basement right on to the platform!

There's also the old IRT 93st station, shut down when they expanded the platforms at 96st, but still visible if you head that way on the 1/2/3.

👍👍 it's amazing what has been abandoned in NYC or almost any large city.

There was a direct entrance into Bloomingdale's at 59th and Lexington Avenue. Farther up , at 68th Street, there was a platform entrance into Hunter Collage. I'm not sure if that one is still extant.

Had to come in an learn what forfotten is german for

You CAN have a tour of the City Hall Station… well they used to do it before Covid for $50 a ticket

My favorite NYC Subway cars are the R32, R46 and R62. I was shocked when a news video I was watching referred to the R46 as "a bucket of bolts."

There's so much more abandoned, completed but never used, and uncompleted infrastructure in the NYCT Subways... Its shocking how much money got spent on infrastructure which has been left to go to waste - Some so far as being intentionally destroyed such that it could never be completed, renovated, or otherwise brought into revenue service. Also shocking is how long projects take nowadays and how much they cost vs even 50 or 60, let alone 120 years ago... The costs are very literally out of control. Also - Take a 6 train downtown sometime, ideally in off hours with low passenger traffic. If you ask politely the motorman may be willing to go around the City Hall Loop at (further) reduced speed so you can get a look (so long as the train will remain in service to go back uptown). Though they can not open the doors and let anyone out (excepting for organized Transit Museum events), the trackage is classified as being in revenue service and so technically legal for passengers to remain onboard. For years after 9/11 doing this was explicitly prohibited due to security paranoia - City Hall Loop is under the steps of NYC City Hall with entrances in City Hall Park. The gap between platform and subway cars is exceptional at the middle doors of trains... Completely unsafe due to the rather sharp platform curve - For Transit Museum trips only the front door of each car is (manually) opened and a ramp lifted into place to close the (much smaller) gap.

there was a tunnel that connected the 42nd Street station on 40th Street on the F line with the herald square station at 33rd Street.

+1 for mentioning Court St/NY Transit museum!

No mention of the first subway tunnel ever built in NYC? Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn had a subway line that ran under the street for several hundred feet. The line was operated by horse drawn train and went down to the docs north of Court Street. This was before Tesla helped build the first electric train motor. There are still sections of it that exist; while the rest was buried/filled in decades ago. 10 years ago there were still tours that would go down there.

Thanks for another great video! Very enjoyable and informative!😊

I love your work! Keep it up!

There is so MUCH more real estate of closed exits down there in the darkness. Know 163rd st on the C? The REAL 163rd st Exit was closed in the late 80s early 90s when the K last ran to 168th and the B ran there as well.

Who here has actually seen the entrance to the Knickerbocker Hotel at Times Square Station in real life? 👋

Hey Ryan, my first time commenting. Love the Channel, great videos. Super informative, keep up the great content

Thanks a lot. I enjoy these NY series ❤

I once went into the Hotel Penn. tunnel under 7th ave. It was through the basement and they had a baggage claim window,.

There was a LOT more to the pneumatic subway not catching on, one of them being boss tweed getting a kickback for all the surface rides and if transportation went underground he got nothing

“thirty two street” lol

Yes sir another home run

They're probably closed off because of all the mood slime flowing through them.

😊 too cool ... thanx , Ryan ... very entertaining very well done ❤

I am fascinated by your videos. I was wondering if you could someday do a video on the great hotels in the city. Especially, for personal reasons, The Sherry-Netherland, which I know has an amazing history.

Ahh I got happy when you mentioned the Woolworth building basement but you didn’t even mention the big marble pool down there. I had some fun parties in that pool.

Nice bit of modern archaeology about NYC subway stations long forgotten.

Thanks again Professor Socash, you are a Great teacher of History, really like this lesson of the Subway in NYC, I have never been to NYC, but I have been to the state of New York went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, well until next time be safe and be at Peace...

Excellent & interesting content

Have you done a story about the Roosevelt platform under the Waldorf Astoria Hotel?

You teach us all some amazingly rare things, but this was the most fun!

They should keep building these. That would be a huge perk.

So cool!

City Hall station is used as a turnaround by the 6 train at Brooklyn Bridge City Hall station (the end of the 6 line) to cycle the trains to go uptown. There is another abandoned station between Canal St and City Hall - Worth St. If you ever see the NYC subway map and think there's a pretty large, uninterrupted stretch of track on the B line, between Grand St and DeKalb Av; yeah there's Gold St, along with it's zoetrope-like walls, right around York St.

i vaguely remember seeing one of those closed entrances.

I love these stations being time capsules. Imagine peaking through a crevice in a door to one of these abandoned hallways. City Hall Station Tour would be definitely on my bucketlist when going to New York one day as well as trying to staying in metro 6 to go around the loop.

Another Great Video

I worked at One Penn Plaza back in the early 90's. There was an elevator entrance to the building from Penn Station. The building was maintenance man told me about the entrance. Saved my at least 10 minutes in my commute.

These topics you cover are where I "live", if I can come up with something coherent I'll send it in. The episode where you were walking around the Polish island was a nice experience to watch

Look up Groveport, Ohio do use for the canals to service the boats. That’s why it was a port and the original founders used to have a house on Main Street still has the original brick Road still has the original house and I used to live there right now it’s Groveport city but used to be Groveport Village And it was Groveport Township and it’s been upgraded to Groveport city so if you want to have a place in Ohio that is kind of old but is now city but used to be a town around the start of Covid now it’s a city and it used to be all cold and all that and it has rubber going through original station

The Court St photo is not NYC. I believe it's Boston.

Ryan you're the best

We thoroughly enjoy your channel. You have a great delivery & presence. The topics are always informative & entertaining. Thank you for providing them.

HELL'S Kitchen, dude. Come on.

Holy hell! Now I have to check Hotels extra careful if I ever visit NY. Wouldn't want basketball Americans to appear out of the blue in my hotel. Scary place!

5:45 NYC loved using "V" instead of "U" just for the looks back in the early 1900's. SVBWAY, PVBLIC LIBRARY, etc. I like it.

There is also in Brooklyn a abandonment tunnel, downtown Brooklyn on Atlantic Avenue from Flatbush Avenue down to water east river part of the Long Island railroad system. That’s pretty interesting too. Ryon, but keep up the good work love history especially in the new York tri-state area love your channel.

The tunnels of old Chinatown here in Fresno California would be a great subject.

Absolutely fascinating I've always been curious about the NYC subway systems history it's construction the engineering the tunnels the grand scale and scope of a metropolitan transit subway system

Reminds me of the 79 movie rebel of the road. 🥂😉

How about on the 4-5-6 59st uptown side south end of the station was the entrance to Alexander's department store.

I stayed at the New Yorker in 2019. Nice place.

Littke know fact, the first robbery occurred on it's first day of operation...😊

Now if only the subways could become safe and clean again.

In the original Exorcist Movie,the priest has a vision of his mother walk up then back down at a Subway Station.What was that Subway station Entry?

A ny'er... if fares were five cents today, most people still wouldn't pay the fare.😂 I truly love and appreciate your work...please continue doing what you do...extremely well! The Nostrand ave underpass in Brooklyn has history as well.. though a bit dark.

GREAT WATCH.... Love both NYC and Chicago history, have been to both many times, don't get may but I like Chicago a bit better. I really wish the city leaders of both would get their heads out of there A$$ and take pride in the cities they are responsible for.

why'd new york have to change? i feel like it must have been such an insanely beautiful place during the 40's/50's. the architecture is amazing

I tried to find the email to send an idea but couldnt locate. so I just wanted to offer the subject of the luxury liner and the pride of our country, the SS United States, which is slowly deteriorating on the Delaware river in Philadelphia. Hopefully one day she will be saved.

hi ryan. how 'bout a vid about strange doors? not Jim, but forgotten or hidden doors that were discovered or held surprises like disused infrastructure or passages to forgotten places or hidden rooms. no modern stuff now;)

What are these enterances? A secret entry to the intercontinental express subway, a way to time travel or does it put you in a trance

So what you're saying, is Harold Finch and the Team could really have found a place to operate out of. The Machine will be pleased, lol...

!(: COOL, THANKS ;)!

04:14 nice beaver.

How come the connection to the IRT 7th avenue line in Brooklyn from the old Abraham and Strauss (now Macy's) department store was omitted?!

Damn. I've used the Chambers Street Station I think.

Who's picture on your tee shirt?

I was at a convention at Hotel Penn in 2013. The place was a complete DUMP (aside from the lobby). When I heard it was getting demolished, I was relieved. As of 2024 it's a vacant lot. A huge improvement. Great video btw

The South Ferry station would be interesting to see how it changed post-911 and any other superseded stations. Being from Staten Island but living in Largo, FL, i like seeing things from before i moved off the island in 1985...

how about a series on the DETROIOT UNTIED RAILWAY?

I love New York ❤

You should do a story about the abandoned Arch Street Subway in Philadelphia

There was an entrance on the uptown 4 & 5 @ Wall St. that lead you right into the building of One Wall. That exit was permanently closed after 911.

How can they just brick off tunnels and open areas??? Dont they have to regularly inspect them to make sure there are no structural issues for the roads or buildings above?

When did the Chambers street station close? I could swear I’ve been at that stop in the 90s

"Visit The U.S. Fleet" subway broadside from "The Presidential Naval Review" in May of 1934