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“Subway” is a bit of a misnomer, as only about two miles of the less-than-ten-mile track lay underground. However, this portion is the part the system is known for: the Broad Street Tunnel. Today, it still stands, its walls decorated with graffiti art.
The history of the subway and its underground tunnel dates back to the days when the Erie Canal’s route wound its way through Rochester. According to the Rochester Subway website, in the early 1900s, city leaders thought the canal route traveled unnecessarily through the city’s center, and they sought to have it re-routed. Thus, a portion of the canal was closed and drained after 1919, and the land was dedicated for new development.
The city used it for a subway system. Construction, utilizing the old bed of the canal, was completed in 1927. The city newspaper, in a 1980s retrospective, related that the subway wasn’t popular, struggling with limited resources and competition with automobiles. A wartime increase in productivity faded, and the city was left with a subway that seemed more work than it was worth. Its fate was sealed in 1956 when the passenger runs were ended at the end of June, as commemorated in a Democrat and Chronicle article. Parts of the line were briefly used to haul freight, but the tunnels lay abandoned.
Not all of the system remained unused: the Eastern Expressway (or I-490) was built over portions of the unused subway bed. The abandoned tunnels under Broad Street still generate controversy in recent years, as the city struggles with its potential redevelopment. Ideas proposed, as shared by the city newspaper, include turning it into a pedestrian tunnel, filling the tunnel in permanently, or even, as offered by the Democrat and Chronicle, reconnecting the tunnels to the Erie Canal.
[Sources:
Governale, Mike. “About the Rochester Subway.” Rochester Subway. Accessed September 22, 2022. https://www.rochestersubway.com/rochester_subway_history.php.
Kirst, Sean. “Rochester’s Adventure in Optimism.” Rochester Subway. City Newspaper, June 2, 1983. https://www.rochestersubway.com/topics/2013/01/rochesters-adventure-in-optimism/
“Rochester Subway Ends, July 1, 1956.” Newspapers.com. Democrat and Chronicle, July 1, 1956. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22451512/rochester-subway-ends-july-1-1956/.
McDermott, Meaghan M. “Visitors go below to see unused tunnel.” Web.archive.org. Democrat and Chronicle, October 3, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20200807004816/https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2015/10/03/inside-erie-canal-aqueduct/73163610/ ]
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