[quote="On 30 Nov 2015 In an article entitled "Inside the Brooklyn Building that Held the Subway's Secrets ", Alex Zimmerman of the Atlas Obscura staff"]
Inside the Brooklyn Building that Held the Subway's Secrets
Rendering from the Board of Transportation Annual Report, 1949. (Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum)
If there were a contest for New York City’s least favorite building, 370 Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn would almost certainly be in the running. “Blight,” “derelict,” and “eyesore” are some of the nicer words politicians and journalists have used to describe the quality of the former transit headquarters. The Brooklyn Eagle shortlisted it as one of the borough’s ugliest buildings. And, as a 2012 New York Times piece about its renovation noted, “it is pretty much impossible to love the Transportation Building.”
Even a casual visitor can understand why it gets a bad rap. The 13-story limestone structure, situated just above the Jay Street-MetroTech subway station, has been wrapped in scaffolding for years–and its blocky, modernist design gives it a soul-crushing bureaucratic vibe. But bureaucracy was precisely what the building was designed for–and exactly what its early cheerleaders loved about it.
“Not a cathedral of commerce, not a temple of advertising, not a palace of municipal power: just a grouping of offices arranged for the efficient dispatch of administration,” wrote Lewis Mumford, the city’s pre-eminent architecture critic, in the April 25, 1953 edition of the New Yorker.
And while the greyish building isn’t much to look at, inside, it’s a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine. Called the Transportation Building, it was the epicenter of the city’s transit infrastructure and housed thousands of employees who kept track of everything from the Subway Command Center, a long console that helps dispatchers keep track of trains throughout the system, to public-facing services like the lost and found. In fact, 370 Jay Street has what some transit experts call a secret history–one that includes a hidden money elevator, top-secret passageways and an infamous heist.[/quote]
Read more at the Atlas Obscura's web site
Inside the Brooklyn Building that Held the Subway's Secrets
Rendering from the Board of Transportation Annual Report, 1949. (Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum)
If there were a contest for New York City’s least favorite building, 370 Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn would almost certainly be in the running. “Blight,” “derelict,” and “eyesore” are some of the nicer words politicians and journalists have used to describe the quality of the former transit headquarters. The Brooklyn Eagle shortlisted it as one of the borough’s ugliest buildings. And, as a 2012 New York Times piece about its renovation noted, “it is pretty much impossible to love the Transportation Building.”
Even a casual visitor can understand why it gets a bad rap. The 13-story limestone structure, situated just above the Jay Street-MetroTech subway station, has been wrapped in scaffolding for years–and its blocky, modernist design gives it a soul-crushing bureaucratic vibe. But bureaucracy was precisely what the building was designed for–and exactly what its early cheerleaders loved about it.
“Not a cathedral of commerce, not a temple of advertising, not a palace of municipal power: just a grouping of offices arranged for the efficient dispatch of administration,” wrote Lewis Mumford, the city’s pre-eminent architecture critic, in the April 25, 1953 edition of the New Yorker.
And while the greyish building isn’t much to look at, inside, it’s a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine. Called the Transportation Building, it was the epicenter of the city’s transit infrastructure and housed thousands of employees who kept track of everything from the Subway Command Center, a long console that helps dispatchers keep track of trains throughout the system, to public-facing services like the lost and found. In fact, 370 Jay Street has what some transit experts call a secret history–one that includes a hidden money elevator, top-secret passageways and an infamous heist.[/quote]
Read more at the Atlas Obscura's web site
Seen behind the motorman on the inside wall of a PCC departing "Riverside" many years ago: "Pickpockets are on duty for your convenience."
