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In the event of nuclear attack, you may be safe in Washington Heights’ 190th Street subway station
The 190th Street A train station in Washington Heights is buried so deep underground it could act as a fallout shelter in the case of a nuclear attack.
Or at least that’s what Dr. Morris Shamos, an NYU physics researcher, concluded in 1951. He’d conducted tests using cosmic rays that determined “radiation from an atomic bomb would be extremely unlikely to reach the station,” the New York Times reported.
“On The Way” stumbled across Shamos’ study while reporting on the MTA’s plan to finally renovate the 190th Street station, which has paint coming off the walls and chipped ceilings. The station is buried beneath 140 feet of bedrock at Fort Tryon Park. It takes a 30-second elevator ride to move between its upper entrance and mezzanine.
Around the same time as Shamos’ study, city officials looked into using subway stations in Washington Heights like 190th Street and the even deeper 191st Street station as potential fallout shelters. The Board of Transportation at the time also pitched building shelters inside the planned — but never built — Second Avenue subway. The survey came a year after the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic weapon, ushering in a new chapter of the Cold War.
City officials at the time proposed fitting out deep underground stations with shelter rooms that had plumbing, pantries and first aid kits. But those plans were shelved due to a lack of federal funding.
MTA officials did not answer questions about whether those subway stations could serve as fallout shelters in a pinch. But the agency did say transit officials have participated in workshops that…
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