The City Hall Station in Lower Manhattan was the beginning of the first New York City Subway. Now closed to the public, the station is used by local trains turning around on the IRT Lexington Avenue line.

The first subway was a trailblazer in construction techniques. Concrete jack arches between steel beams and columns for subway roof and sidewalls, extensive use of reinforced concrete, shield driven underwater tunnels lined with cast iron segments, concrete-lined tunnels mined through earth and rock, and elevated steel structures set the pattern for successful rail rapid transit construction for many years. Many tall buildings had already been erected in lower and midtown Manhattan and construction methods had to be adapted to protect these buildings that lined the subway route. Maintaining street traffic, which included electric surface cars, required elaborate and substantial decking over the subway excavation. Networks of subsurface buildings—sewers, water mains, gas piping, electric power lines, telephone and telegraph ducts—had to be maintained and re-routed to make room for the subway construction.

S. Peter Kezios (ASME President), William R. Gibbs (ASCE President), and Leonard Braun (MTA Vice Chairman) at the plaque unveiling ceremony. Photo by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Photo Communications.

Great strides were also made in the field of electric generating facilities. The subway's power plants were huge 100,000 horsepower installations with a number of substations along the route. Electric power generation had progressed considerably since the turn of the century but at that time these plants represented bold advances.

The first section of the subway from City Hall to 145th Street was completed on October 27, 1904 and service was inaugurated with official ceremonies. It was not long before this new transportation facility was overtaken by the City's growth and more subways had to be built. To this day, the City has an active continuing reconstruction and rehabilitation program for updating its extensive accumulation of subway installations.

On the recommendation of the History & Heritage Committee, the ASCE Met Section Board of Directors voted in 1976 to nominate New York City's First Subway as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. The original subway was four years in construction and opened in 1904.

The Society's Board of Direction approved the designation of the subway as a landmark at the Spring 1977 meeting and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers joined ASCE in the landmark designation, jointly designating the pioneering New York City subway line a National Historic Civil and Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

A plaque marking the designation of the First New York City Subway as a National Civil and Mechanical Engineering Landmark was unveiled on February 1, 1978.

A bronze plaque denoting the Societies' landmark designation was presented in a ceremony on February 1, 1978 in the Brooklyn Bridge station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line. The ceremony was conducted by Leonard Braun, Vice Chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and featured addresses by William R. Gibbs, President of the ASCE, S. Peter Kezios, President of ASME, Steven K. Kauffman, Executive Officer of the New York City Transit Authority, and a representative of the Mayor of the City of New York. The ceremonies concluded with a trip in vintage BMT Standard subway cars to the Transit Authority Museum at the old Independent Court Street station in Brooklyn.

The First New York City Subway would lead to many innovations: introduction of the first all-steel subway car, installation of an efficient interlocking block system with overlapping track circuits and automatic trippers, which keep trains a certain distance apart, and the devising of a button that automatically stops a train once the motorman's hand is removed from the control panel. A challenging engineering feat requiring three types of construction, the underground rapid transit line was later extended to the Bronx and Brooklyn.