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Planes Trains and Automobiles

The Bowery under the Third Avenue Elevated: Capturing the soot and shadow of Old New York

It’s a vivid image (for some bleak, other romantic) that most New Yorkers cannot imagine. But a few people still living today remember it quite well — the Bowery underneath an elevated train line. The Third Avenue Elevated was constructed in 1878, connecting South Ferry with Harlem via a sturdy, darkening railroad track, hoisted over… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

Welcome to the ‘subway art museum’: The early battle against ‘disfiguring’ advertisements in the subway

Above: Protect this station from the rueful blight of subway advertisements! (Pic NYPL) There once was a time, believe it or not, when the city was so concerned for the aesthetic beauty of the subway that an early controversy broke regarding the scandalous inclusion of advertisements in subway stations. The stations designed for those very… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

The story of how Idlewild Airport was renamed for John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was memorialized in dozens of ways following his assassination on November 22, 1963. None of these are more vital to the daily lives of New Yorkers than John F. Kennedy International Airport — or Kennedy Airport or simply JFK — the business airport in the… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles Podcasts

The Hindenburg Over New York: The Airship Age Comes To An Abrupt End

PODCAST The era of the Zeppelin, how it shaped the New York skyline and the disastrous crash of the Hindenburg on an airfield in New Jersey. On the afternoon of May 6, 1937, New Yorkers looked overhead at an astonishing sight — the arrival of the Hindenburg, the largest airship in the world, drifting calmly across… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

Deconstruction Of The Third Avenue El: A new exhibit at the Transit Museum

Who knew the dismantling of something so filthy and monstrous could be so beautiful? Sid Kaplan is a master print-maker and photography teacher who the New York Times recently called “the darkroom equivalent of the session man, the go-to guy famous musicians revere and want to work with.” Kaplan has been fascinated with photography since his… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

Those crazy kids! This Friday learn all about the Great Subway Race of 1967

Here’s an event for you this Friday that’s a little bit The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and an iota of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — with a New York City touch, of course. It’s The Great Subway Race of 1967! Fifty years ago M.I.T. computer whiz kid Peter Samson programmed a mainframe computer about the… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

A Brief History of Subway Cinema

Decades in the making, the Second Avenue Subway finally opened to the public this week, its glimmering new stations at 72nd, 86th, and 96th Streets heralded with the pomp and circumstance of a movie premiere. Of course, the subway doesn’t immediately come to mind as a photogenic movie star, but in fact, the various tunnels and… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

A city of bridges: One century ago, Scientific American predicted a future of elevated sidewalks

Imagine a city where the High Line isn’t just a novel park, but the primary form of urban conveyance. In 1913, with the proliferation of the automobile, it seemed humans were being crowded out at ground level.  People were beginning to think of themselves as removed from the street.  Daredevils were experimenting with flight, and… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

100 years ago today: Seventh Avenue collapsed under rush hour traffic

One hundred years ago today, — a horrifying disaster on Seventh Avenue endangered the lives of New Yorkers on their way to work. Excavations for the new Seventh Avenue subway line (the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue line, aka the 1-2-3 trains) were proceeding well below an active thoroughfare. On the morning of September 22, 1915, two detonations… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

The Horror Underground: New York’s first subway disaster — during rush hour, one hundred years ago today

On January 6, 1915, a seemingly minor incident under the streets of Midtown caused a terrible panic, “the worst disaster in the history of the New York subway” up to that date, injuring hundreds of commuters and killing one.  That morning, two electrical cables feeding into manholes at Broadway and 52nd Street suddenly shorted out,… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

The New York City subway system opened 110 years ago today; An interview with The Race Underground author Doug Most

Crowds at the now-defunct City Hall Station of the brand new New York subway system. (NYPL) One hundred and ten years ago today, the first train of the New York City subway system began its first trip underneath the city, filled with eager and excited passengers.  Thousands lined up to take this revolutionary new ride,… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

New York City’s “stripped and abandoned” car crisis

The fate of an automobile at Breezy Point, 1973 (Courtesy US National Archives) The abandoned car, that most dramatic symbol of urban blight, is a sight that has pretty much vanished from most New York City streets. (Most, not all.) In a city refitted for the automobile by the mid 20th century, people just began… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

History in the making 2/18: Pennsylvania Station edition

Aging beauty: The entrance of Penn Station, photographed by James Burke in 1957 for Life Magazine. — Tonight on PBS’s American Experience: The Rise and Fall of Penn Station, the story of McKim, Mead and White’s Midtown masterpiece and how its tragic demolition in the 1960s forced New Yorkers to consider the importance of historic… Read More

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Mysterious Stories Planes Trains and Automobiles

“This hypocritical, swindling world” — One hundred years ago, a mysterious suicide in the halls of Pennsylvania Station

The halls of Pennsylvania Station, conjuring the grandeur of a Roman temple, would have created an otherworldly echo at rush hour on January 22, 1914.  Thousands of commuters hurrying across the marble floors of McKim, Mead and White’s steel-latticed terminal, rushing to arriving trains pulling into the sunken boarding area from deep tunnels beneath Manhattan… Read More

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Planes Trains and Automobiles

History in the Making 11/21: Everybody Take A Cab Edition

Taxis, not as taxing! The caption for the photo above: “New York City Mayor’s Bureau of Licenses condemning a taxicab after new ordinance regulating taxicab meters went into effect on August 1, 1913.”  The law was withheld in state court 100 years ago today, kicking in a new set of lowered cab fares for New… Read More