The New York City subway opened
On this day · 27 October 1904
In 1904 New York buried its rapid transit underground, and 100,000 riders paid a nickel to see the future on opening night.
At 2:35 p.m. on October 27, 1904, Mayor George McClellan took the controls of the first train of the Interborough Rapid Transit subway. He was supposed to drive a token stretch and hand off to a professional; instead he enjoyed it so much he stayed at the throttle from City Hall to 103rd Street.
The line was a genuine feat of engineering. It ran 9.1 miles through 28 stations, looping up from City Hall beneath Park Avenue to Grand Central, across 42nd Street to Times Square, then north up Broadway to 145th Street.
When the doors opened to the public at 7 p.m., the response was overwhelming. More than 100,000 New Yorkers crowded the platforms, each paying a single nickel to ride beneath their own city for the first time.
The IRT was privately run and modest in length, but it set the template for a network that would grow into one of the largest rapid-transit systems on Earth, running around the clock.
Sources & references
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