10. Secret Tunnels to the Former MTA Money Room
From 1951 to 2006, the New York City transit system ran an armored train that moved all the subway and bus fares collected to a secret room, the Department of Revenue’s Money Room, inside a 13-story building at 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn. 370 Jay Street was strategically located atop a subway station where, according to information from a previous New York Transit Museum exhibit, “tunnels could be built to connect the building to IND, BMT and IRT lines.”
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. In the first photo above, you can see the crashgate as seen from the Jay Street F line. There was also a crashgate on the northbound R train track at the Lawrence Street station (now Jay Street Metro-Tech). After the money was collected from the train, and taken through one of the crashgates, it was brought down an empty tunnel to one of two revenue-only elevators that carried it up to the money room on the second floor. The money room contained a vault within a fortified cage and many security security cameras to track the movement of employees (who all wore special pocketless clothes). The Money Room closed January 2006.