A Look Inside the Secret Tunnels in 370 Jay Street, Once Home to the MTA’s Money Room

We previouslyreported on the MTA’s special armored money train that delivered fare collected from all over the transit system to a money room once located at 370 Jay Street, the subject of a current exhibit at the New York Transit Museum. This building was designed especially for this purpose, and selected for its location atop the Jay Street subway station. A crashgate along the Jay Street southbound F line subway track allowed the fares to be unloaded directly into the basement of the building, into special tunnels inside what looks like a uniform government building.

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Today, we are pleased to share with you photographs of what these tunnels looked like inside 370 Jay Street, places that may have already been sealed off with the large-scale renovation of the building by New York University. These photographs were submitted to us from an anonymous source, and appear to be taken after the closing of the money room in 2006.

The crashgate to the money tunnel on the Jay Street F train line:

The up and down steps and yellow handrails over the pipes are located directly behind the mysterious silver gate on the IND Jay St F line:

Below is the revenue crashgate on the northbound R train track at the Lawrence Street station (now Jay Street Metro-Tech). Our contact notes that workers absolutely hated this part of their job because there was no elevator that reached this level. It was a full four levels under the other crashgates for the IND and IRT, which also meant it was a four floor climb carrying the heavy bags of coins before they could get to the level where they could catch one of the two elevators to the revenue room on the second floor of 370 Jay St:

The tunnels, which were as simple as can be:

The tunnel on the northbound IRT 2/3 lines between Hoyt St and Borough Hall. Note the abandoned revenue carts that met the money train when the gate was up. The carts were filled by workers and pushed by armed collection agents to one of two revenue only elevators for the lift to the money room on the second floor of 370 Jay St.

What you saw painted on the floor on the second floor as soon as you stepped off one of the two revenue elevators. You immediately knew you were in a restricted area seeing this STOP hand:

Three shots of the now abandoned 370 Jay Street second-floor revenue counting rooms. Notice the slew of cameras on the walls positioned so every angle is observable. Every revenue worker handling money wore MTA-issued pocket-less clothing and every worker carried a location-traceable personal body alarm that notified the supervisors of any immediate problem and exactly where the worker was:

The vault was located in the Money Room on the second floor of 370 Jay St inside this heavily fortified cage:

Some may remember the movie Money Train with Jennifer Lopez, Woody Harrelson, and Wesley Snipes. Below is the prop train used in the film, currently in Coney Island Yard. In reality, the money train was much more nondescript

Next, read more about the armored money train and discover the secrets of the NYC subway.