NYC Old City Hall Subway Station Tour

14 May 2023

New York has an extensive subway system with 472 stations connected with 28 lines, it is the biggest subway system in the world. Going back in time, the first subway in New York left from City Hall station in 1904 to much public attention. Time has moved on and the subway system outgrew the station in a literal sense, trains became too long for the station and it was abandoned. The station is currently not accessible outside of guided tours.

Even before moving to the US I heard about old City Hall station in New York and wanted to visit it. When I moved to New York I started eyeing tickets but due to COVID tours were suspended. This weekend however we managed to attend one of the first tours since suspension and it was great.

A note on light: although this is the subway, there are skylights. These will impact what your photos will look like, when we went to visit it was cloudy, i.e. cameras that can’t deal well with dark environments will have a hard time.

How to book

These tours are organized by the fantastic NY Transit Museum, for more details on the tours see here. More details on the station are available on Wikipedia. This tour was great, if you are able to I would suggest you go!