The Sixth Avenue Subway Finally Opens

On December 15, 1940, the city switched on local subway service along the new IND Sixth Avenue Line, running trains from West Fourth Street north through Herald Square and Bryant Park to a brand new stop at Rockefeller Center. It was the payoff for four years of digging under one of Manhattan's busiest streets, and it came two years after crews finally tore down the old elevated train that had rattled along Sixth Avenue since the 1870s. The el had closed for good on December 4, 1938, and its removal cleared the way for the tunnel below. The whole Sixth Avenue Line ran to $59.5 million to build, and it gave Midtown a north-south route that took real pressure off the crowded line one avenue over.