February 21–27, 2020 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 7
The big dig: Workers digging the Greenpoint tube in 1929, the location of today’s G train.
Tunnel vision
New exhibit showcases early
subway construction photos
EXHIBIT
“Streetscapes and Subways” at the
New York City Transit Museum 99
Schermerhorn St., at Boerum Place
in Downtown, (718) 694–1600, www.
nytransitmuseum.org. Through Jan.
17, 2021; Tue–Fri, 10 am–4 pm. Sat–
Sun, 11 am–5 pm. $10 ($5 kids).
to Bencivenga.
“Most people don’t actually stop to
think about the original IRT subway
was for the most part done by hand:
pick axes, shovels, wheelbarrows, and
mules,” she said.
The photos also capture scenes of a
now-forgotten Brooklyn. Shots of construction
along the Fourth Avenue Line
(now the D, N, and R trains), show the
street lined with horse carriage businesses,
“Along Fourth Avenue you have all
these equine-based businesses like farriers,
carriage makers, veterinarians,”
said Jodi Shapiro.
Today, the wide thoroughfare is sprinkled
Photo by Pierre P. Pullis, Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum
with auto shops and gas stations
— a different kind of transportation-focused
business, noted Bencivenga.
“It was vehicle repair, it still kind
of is vehicle repair in 2020. It’s in the
DNA of that quadrant of Brooklyn,”
she said.
Shapiro chose the roughly 250 images
from the museum’s vast archive
of subway construction photos. The
snaps are mostly utilitarian, but a surprising
number had an artistic touch,
with posed workmen and interesting
compositions, said Shapiro.
“It looks like they were trying to show
how dignified these people were even
in a climate where laborers were probably
not considered essential at all, even
though they were doing the most important
jobs,” she said.
The pictures, taken before, during,
and after construction, documented any
damage caused by construction accidents,
which were common due to the
prevalent use of dynamite and the lack
of modern safety precautions.
The photos also captured interesting
finds discovered below the streets, including
a skull, an axe, and an entire
wooden boat workers found while digging
up ground for the South Ferry station
in Manhattan.
“That entire part of Lower Manhattan
is landfill, so any construction that
happens there, even nowadays, they find
all sorts of interesting things,” said Shapiro.
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By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
They’ve got the hole picture!
A new photo exhibit focuses on
subway construction at the dawn
of the 20th century! “Streetscapes and
Subways,” at Downtown’s New York
Transit Museum, features more than 250
photographs taken between 1900 and
1940 by brothers Pierre and Granville
Pullis, who were hired to document the
literally groundbreaking transit projects.
The photos graphically demonstrate
how much the underground trains
have changed the landscape of Brooklyn,
said the museum’s director.
“They take you back to 1900s New
York and you really get a sense of the
before and the after, and how transformative
mass transit’s been,” said Concetta
Bencivenga.
The exhibit makes visitors appreciate
how difficult some of the early subways
building methods were, according
said the exhibit’s curator.
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