The 6 Train Passes a Station That Closed in 1945. Don't Stay On.

On October 27, 1904, New York City opened its first subway line. The very first station, the showpiece, was under City Hall.¹

It was beautiful. A curved platform under arched ceilings of cream and green tile, built by the Guastavino company, who made some of the finest tiled vaults in America. Skylights of colored glass let daylight fall onto the tracks. Brass chandeliers hung from the arches.¹

It was also a problem. The platform was built on a tight curve. As trains got longer, the newer cars no longer fit along it, and the curve left dangerous gaps between the train and the platform edge. Hardly anyone used the station anyway. The Brooklyn Bridge stop was a short walk away.¹

The City Hall station closed on December 31, 1945.¹

But the tracks were never removed. The station sits on a loop. Today, when downtown 6 trains reach the last stop at Brooklyn Bridge, they go around that loop to turn back uptown. Every one of them passes through the old City Hall station, under the chandeliers, past the empty curved platform, in the dark.²

For years, riders were told to get off at Brooklyn Bridge. Now transit officials allow them to stay on and ride the loop. People do it to see the station, for a few seconds, through the train windows.²

It does not stop. It is not supposed to.

Andre Lewis drove the 6 train. He had for eleven years. He knew the loop the way you know the stairs in your own house. Brooklyn Bridge. Doors close. The long slow curve. The tiles flashing past, the skylights, the old chandeliers. Back up to the uptown platform.

He never really looked at the station. Nobody who works there does. It's just part of the turnaround.

When his old training mentor, a conductor named Harold, died at ninety-four, Harold's family asked Andre to clean out the locker he had kept at Coney Island Yard for decades, long after he retired. Harold had never given it up. The union let it slide.

In the locker was a tin lunchbox. In the lunchbox was a notebook, a brass subway token stamped 1904, and a black-and-white photograph of the City Hall station. Empty platform. Chandeliers lit.

There was one person in the photograph.

A woman, standing at the very end of the curved platform, in a long dark coat, facing the tracks. Waiting.

On the back, in pencil: Dec. 31, 1945. Last night of service. She was still there after.

The notebook was Harold's father's. He had been a conductor too, on the old IRT line, and he had worked the last night the City Hall station was open.

They're closing City Hall tonight. Good. Nobody uses it. Except her.

Every night, the last train, there's a woman on the far end of the platform. Long coat. Doesn't get on. Doesn't get off. Just watches the doors. Sam says she's been there since the war. Sam says she's been there since the station opened.

Old Mulligan, who worked the line in 1904, gave me the rule my first week. He said it like it was a joke, but he didn't laugh.

Never let a passenger ride the loop. Clear every car at the bridge. If the train ever stops in City Hall, do not open the doors. Whatever you see on that platform, it is waiting for a train that will let it on.

The last entry, January 1946:

We closed the station. She's still there. I saw her from the loop tonight, under the lights. They left the lights on.

Why did they leave the lights on?