Posted on Monday, October 27, 2025
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by The Association of Mature American Citizens
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On October 27, 1904, the pulse of New York City shifted beneath the pavement as the inaugural run of the city’s new underground transit system departed from City Hall station at 2:35 p.m., piloted by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. himself. This event marked a major leap not just for the city, but for American urban mobility — the start of what would become perhaps the greatest subway system in the United States.
The line of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) stretched for 9.1 miles and included 28 stations, running from City Hall in lower Manhattan, up to Grand Central Terminal (mid-town), then west along 42nd Street to Times Square, and finally north to 145th Street and Broadway in Harlem. At 7 p.m. that evening, the system opened to the public, and over 100,000 riders paid a nickel for their first journey beneath the city.
This opening came after fierce competition in the U.S. and abroad to build rapid transit systems underground. Though London’s underground dates to 1863 and Boston opened a subway in 1897, New York’s system would soon tower above its peers in reach and scale.
In the years following the launch, the subway quickly extended: the Bronx in 1905, Brooklyn in 1908, and Queens by 1915. Today, the system boasts 36 lines and 472 stations, and the 8th Avenue “A” Express train alone covers more than 31 miles from Manhattan’s northern tip to far-southeast Queens.
Perhaps most striking is how the subway transformed New York’s daily rhythm. More than 3 million riders traverse its tunnels each day. It remains one of the very few full-time, 24-hours-a-day rapid-transit systems in the world — a testament to the scale and ambition of the original 1904 project and its legacy.
But beyond the numbers, the opening of the subway signaled something deeper: a new kind of city. A city where the street-level bustle hid layers of motion underneath, where neighborhoods once reached by horse-drawn streetcars or elevated lines now linked by steel and steam beneath the street. The subterranean arteries reshaped commerce, commuting patterns, and urban geography itself.
For the residents of New York in 1904, slipping into a freshly-painted station and boarding a train beneath the city was nothing short of astonishing. The urban skyline might make the headlines, but beneath it ran the veins of the modern metropolis. The October 27 event was more than a ribbon-cutting—it was the start of an underground revolution.
As we ride the subway today, in worn shoes and with distracted headphones, it’s easy to forget that every journey echoes that first run down from City Hall with Mayor McClellan at the throttle. Yet that day more than a century ago laid the tracks for a city below the city, always moving, always humming.
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