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New Yorkers once waited for the subway by the glow of chandeliers. Really.

When the city’s first subway station opened in 1904 underneath City Hall in Lower Manhattan, it was a testament to New York’s arrival as a world-class city on par with London, Paris or Rome. The ornate station featured chandeliers, ornamental skylights and soaring archways with zigzagging patterns of terra-cotta tiles.

What a difference a century makes.

Today, most of New York’s 472 subway stations are as tired and worn out as the riders who squeeze onto the problem-plagued transit system. There are leaky ceilings, smelly trash and big, fat rats to sidestep. Trains are perpetually late and unbearably crowded.

But in a reminder of how the subway once treated its patrons, the New York Transit Museum on Wednesday hosted a rare tour for the media of the old City Hall station. Shuttered in 1945, the station has remained largely off limits to the public and has been all but lost to generations of subway riders.