In Subways, Suddenly, 2 Glimpses of History - NY Times

The Bergen Street "ghost station," which has been closed for decades, is visible only when the Manhattan-bound F train is running express.

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER
Published: November 29, 2013

The Old City Hall Station, which closed in the 1940s, is visible when the downtown No. 6 train turns around after its last stop at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall.

The other is the subway system’s forgotten shame, cast in blue spray paint and corrugated metal, then suspended in disrepair since the grime-and-graffiti era of the 1970s, when it served a neighborhood in Brooklyn that bears little resemblance to today’s.

There are more than a few stations hidden in the city’s underground thickets, but none offer more contrasting images of New York’s past than these two: Old City Hall Station, the flagship of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, and the lower level at Bergen Street, last seen widely as the backdrop of a horror film.

Now, for equally divergent reasons involving train turnarounds and the vicissitudes of repair, both can be glimpsed for those who know where to look. The first case is deliberate: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has in recent years begun allowing riders to stay on the No. 6 train as it turns around at the southern end of its run. The second is not. In the last several months, planned and unplanned work on the Culver Line in Brooklyn has often rerouted F trains to the old express tracks that pass below Cobble Hill.

Among history-minded riders, the stations have for decades stood as emblems of the transit system’s dueling legacies. They are the impossible standard and the indelible blight — the reason today’s wistful older riders can be sorted into two camps: those for whom hindsight has softened the edges of the subway’s darkest days, and the dwindling few with memories long enough to include its most regal beginnings.

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