New York metropolitan area passed through ports in New York or in one of the surrounding towns. The five boroughs of New York City — The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island — were consolidated into a single city in 1898. The newly unified New York City encouraged both more physical connections between the boroughs and the growth of bedroom communities. The New York City Subway began operating in 1904 as the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, one of three systems (the other two being the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation and the Independent Subway System) that were later taken over by the city. Railroad stations
Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation Company (IRT), the other private operator of subways in New York City, the BMT remained solvent throughout the Great Depression and showed a profit, albeit small in its last year, until the very end of its transit operations. Several pre-unification BMT equipment have been preserved in various museums. While some of the equipment are operational, others are in need of restoration or are used simply as static displays. Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation The Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) was an urban transit holding company, based in Brooklyn, New York City, United States, and incorporated in 1923. The system was sold to the