New Year on the Subway 1

For a brief moment – tinged with some horror – I thought that maybe the Interborough Rapid Transit Company had run its own newspaper. It turns out that The Elevated Express was one of two series of company ads – house propaganda, essentially – run in the trains from the late 1910s until the 1940s.

The other oddity is that the date is 1938, the celebration is at the New York World’s Fair Grounds, and the fair didn’t open until the spring of 1939. Apparently, the World’s Fair organization – privately owned and profit-seeking – was renting the partially-complete fair grounds for events, like NYE parties. I particularly like the portrayal of the Perisphere as a bomb.

Note that the Flushing Subway is the 7 train, and there was a branch of the Seocnd Avenue elevated that, upon reaching 59th street when coming up from South Ferry, curved onto the Queensboro Bridge and then joined the 7 tracks at the Queensborough Plaza station.