The crowds inside a 14th Street subway station

Reginald Marsh painted everything in his New York of the 1930s and 1940s: Bowery crowds, showgirls, forgotten men, Coney Island beachgoers, tugboats, panhandlers, and shoppers.

So of course he would take his sketchpad and chronicle New Yorkers using mass transit underground. In 1930 he painted “Subway, 14th Street,” showing a crowd of city residents rushing en masse to or from the train, each absorbed in his or her own world.

If only the newspaper headlines were a little easier for viewers to read!

Vintage subway signage at a Sixth Avenue station

The Sixth Avenue and 14th Street station opened in 1940—a busy, grimy, not particularly inspiring or attractive stop connecting the F and M to the L, 1, 2, and 3 trains.

But it does have terrific old-school mosaic signs that make you feel like you’re back in midcentury Manhattan.

Like this one, directing you toward the Independent Subway—today’s Sixth Avenue and Eighth Avenue lines.

Transferring to the BMT Lines—the initials stood for Brooklyn Manhattan Transit, the company that once oversaw the L (plus the J, M, N, Q, and R trains)—is easy with this helpful arrow.

Even better is this mosaic telling travelers how to get to the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, aka today’s PATH, which shares an entrance to the station. When was the last time you heard the PATH referred to as the H&M?

A shuttered subway passageway at 14th Street

This pedestrian tunnel, which links the 7th Avenue 1-2-3 station to the 8th Avenue A-C-E-L lines, remains locked behind iron bars. It’s located just to the side of the token booth. Could be that the MTA closed it down when it sealed off about 15 other underground passageways in 1991 after a woman was raped in one at 42nd Street.

According to the The Municipal Art Society of New York, Penn Station has an extensive network of long-closed underground tunnels that connect to the Pennsylvania Hotel, the old Gimbels store between 32nd and 33rd Streets (the current Manhattan Mall), and the Farley Post Office across 8th Avenue. And the city is looking into opening them up again. If you like old subway porn, check out the pictures here.