Tour tickets go on sale to members three times a year and tend to sell out within minutes. The Museum says: “The New York Transit Museum’s Old City Hall tours are extremely popular. There are only about 30 tours a year, taking a privileged 1200-odd visitors back in time to explore a subterranean city secret. This is the Grand Central Station of the underground that few New Yorkers, let alone tourists, get to see. WHY WE LOVE THIS ABANDONED SUBWAY STATION Opened in 1904, this station is now a New York transit museum.

City Hall closed on New Year’s Eve, 1945, and has been hidden in the city’s dark underbelly ever since. The station was too short and the line too curved, creating a dangerous gap between the doors and the platform. But by the end of World War II, the shine had come off the Big Apple’s subway station showpiece as newer, longer trains came into service. New Yorkers came out in droves for the grand opening, paying a nickel (five cents) to ride the rails underneath Manhattan for the first time. Opened in 1904 to feverish fanfare, New York’s first subway station heralded an exciting new era in commuter travel. The station has been closed to the public for more than 70 years, its splendid architecture all but lost to the world. Beneath Lower Manhattan you’ll find this turn-of-the-century time capsule of grand vaulted ceilings, elegant archways, ornate skylights and brass chandeliers. The ghost station that takes no passengers, Old City Hall is an underground relic of New York City of old.

Keep your Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, Rockerfeller, and Empire State – we raise you one of the best old attractions in New York – Old City Hall Subway Station.

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