New York Transit Museum

On a rainy, carless Sunday in Brooklyn, the girls and I sat eating a bagel discussing out choices of what to do. I handed our travel book Lonely Planet NYC to Camille to see what she might come up with. A few of her selections were not open on a Sunday, but one was open and, as it turned out, it was only blocks from where we were sitting!

We left the cafe and slogged through the rain up to Brooklyn Heights to visit the New York Transit Museum. Not knowing what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised by all it had to offer!

Note that the museum is in an old subway station. As such, it is not super stroller friendly. The museum is entered via a subway entrance, which, of course, involves stairs. There is a wheelchair lift to descend into the museum from the street, but I don’t know that the lift is available for strollers.

Once in, we were greeted by very friendly staff, who helped us find a place to park our strollers and dry our umbrellas. As we were paying our entrance fee ($5 adults, $3 kids), craft time for kids was announced! We walked very quickly to the back of the museum (being in an old station makes it long and skinny) and participated in a fun craft of building a cart or train, then running it over their mock of the Brooklyn Bridge! The craft was very well run and informative as well!

But having run through the whole of the upper floor of the museum, we couldn’t get back to explore the various areas we had passed through so quickly. There is a “gallery” dedicated to the evolution of the turnstile, full of working “please touch” turnstiles. There are displays on the evolution of the token. And more — cable cars, buses to climb on, history of digging the tunnels, more and more. The kids had a blast!

But, then, we headed down on to the subway platform on the lowest level, where there are two rows of subway cars from varying points in the history. These cars are open for visitors to get in, walk around, sit down, pretend to ride the rails a long time ago. My kids and I had a blast looking at how the subway cars have changed through the years!

I highly recommend the New York Transit Museum to anyone who is fortunate to find themselves in Brooklyn for a day!