Transit Museum Shines a Light on Our History

APRIL 11 -- Steps away from TWU Local 100’s office (referred to by union members as the Union Hall), the New York City Transit Museum displays historical artifacts of the New York City Subway, bus, and commuter rail systems. However, until last month, the 20 Sales Associates who work there had no union representation. That changed on March 25, when we organized them.

The Museum’s retail stores (one at 99 Schermerhorn, along with the subway exhibits and one at Grand Central) support its exhibits by visually telling the history of the system and the transit workers who operate it.

Jodi Shapiro, the Museum’s Curator, says many visitors may not think of the people who work for the transit system as actual human beings. “Through our exhibits, public programs, and educational work, we try to humanize them and to tell visitors, ‘Yeah, the people who clean the subway cars, the people who operate the buses, the people who take your money for metro cards and now omni cards, these people should be respected because they all have a small part in making this system work every day.”

One of the museum’s current exhibits, “Shining a Light on The Subway Sun: The Art of Fred G. Cooper and Amelia Opdyke Jones,” displays signage dating from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Those signs assisted transit workers in encouraging passengers to keep the system clean.

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To deal with the problem of passengers littering, transit management (then under the New York City Board of Transportation) transit hired Fred G. Cooper, a contributor to Life Magazine and co-founder of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), to illustrate “The Subway Sun,” a cartoon campaign using humor to teach commuters that litter goes into a trash receptacle. Later, Cooper recommended Amelia Opdyke Jones, who took over “The Subway Sun” in 1946. Continuing the use of humor, Jones is credited for riffing off the “jitterbug” slang to create a character called “Litterbug.” 

“These campaigns were very effective,” Shapiro says. “They used to give steep fines for littering in the subway. When the first litterbug poster was published and put in the subways and elevators, the number of tickets written for littering was reduced by a couple of thousand.” The Subway Sun’s anti-littering posters, published in 1948, cut the number of summonses for littering by 20%.

Our new union members at the New York Transit Museum welcome TWU Local 100 members to visit the exhibits and their retail stores. Union members who are MTA employees receive free admission to the museum and a 20% discount on store purchases.