The Subway and The City Celebrating a Century

An audacious and all-encompassing book about New York’s underground, The Subway and the City has everything a fan of the city and its trains could want.

The Subway and the City traces The Big Apple’s development as tunnels spread from Manhattan’s original IRT line, running from City Hall to Washington Heights, into Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

An unabashed subway buff, author Stan Fischler, brings his love for the BMT, IND and IRT to life with breezy prose, a lively dash of humor and a fervor never before associated with railroad writing.

Illustrated with more than 375 vintage never-before-seen photos, this historical-social documentary details precisely how New York’s growth directly followed the subway’s expansion. In addition, Fischler provides his own personal vignettes detailing what it was like riding each line, as he has done for more than six decades.

More than that, The Subway and the City captures the voices of genuine subway people with their unique oral histories. Such luminaries as prize-winning television producer Matt Kells and acclaimed subway map-maker John Tauranac, among others, tell in their own words, what the subway means to them and how it shaped their lives.

The contemporary subway and its characters are further enhanced by an arresting collection of original photos by prize-winning photographer David Perlmutter. These illustrations are augmented by vintage pictures from the collections of renowned train lensmen Robert Presbrey, Eric Oszustowicz and William Brennan.

Aided in research and development by John Henderson, Fischler covers every conceivable avenue of the subway’s influence on New Yorkers, even including the realm of sport and theater. Each of baseball’s Subway Series is covered—along with photos—from the very first between the Giants and Yankees in 1921 to the most recent in 2000 between the Yanks and Mets.

Fischler traces the movement of New York’s theater district from 14th Street to Herald Square and, finally, to Times Square, as the entertainment palaces and ball parks followed construction of elevated lines—and then the subway—along the route. He notes that George M. Cohan’s hit song, “Give My Regards to Broadway,” was inspired by the first Interborough Line snaking its way up to 42nd Street.

An original Miss Subways, Ellen Hart, tells her dream-come-true modeling tale, while the film industry’s interest in the underground is covered in a sprightly section called The Subway and Hollywood. Movies dating back to King Kong, Subway Express and The Wrong Man are analyzed along with more modern classics involving the IRT—The Incident, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Money Train.

Every single subway car type, from the stylish BMT Standard to the groaning IRT Low-V, is accompanied by pictures—as well as famed experimental rarities, The Zephyr, Bluebird and Green Hornet.

Long-forgotten subway spurs—the IND’s World’s Fair Special and Court Street Shuttle—are brought to life by a man who has ridden every mile of New York track.

Bonus sections on The Transit Museum, tokens and the vast Coney Island repair shop make The Subway and the City must reading for every New Yorker and anyone with an interest in The Gotham and its remarkable history.

Plus, Fischler tells the world’s only New York subway joke.

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