Three of us, Greg Mills, Charles Dowdell, and I went on an adventure to the Rochester, NY Subway on 5/22/98.
Greg drove us in entering near Nick Tahoe's. The entrance is off of Industrial Street in the center of this map. There is a gate on the right hand side of this street. That's where we drove in. Charlie insisted that we only go left on the subway bed. He said it was dangerous to the right. The star on the map is Nick Tahou's.
We drove in quite a long way, but eventually came upon this wall. We doubled back and explored a station. I climbed a bit of the way up an old stairway to peer into a chamber above. Nothing there but rubble, but around on the other side to the right we found a resident. Here is Charles Dowdell posing near the station. Eventually we exited from the first subway tunnel in Greg's Jeep.
Next, we went to another tunnel section under the Rochester Public Library. This leg was more interesting. The entrance is near the main branch of the Rochester Public Library. From the main entrance we went South on South Ave. We stayed on the West side of the street. We may have crossed Court St., I can't remember. Looking down to the West, we saw an old station building about 40 feet below us. We continued South until we could scramble down the hill. The scramble is across South Ave from a new building.
Once we were down to the level of the station building, we were in. We went North again under the Library. We poked around into all the corners and abandoned stairwells, and woke up the people that live there. We found a resident up a stairwell, and signs of another in a chamber North of where the Genessee River flows under the library. We crossed the lower deck of the Broad St. Bridge. Most of this leg of the subway bed is outdoors or within sight of daylight, but the North end is underground.
You can learn more about the subway (and lots of other stuff) at the New York Museum of Transportation.
Comments: tmayo1 at rochester.rr.com
