Then: The view between Queensboro Plaza and the 33rd and Rawson Station in 1916 The view between Queensboro Plaza and the 33rd and Rawson Station in 1916 G. W. Pullis/New York Transit Museum Collection Now: The view between Queensboro Plaza and the 33rd and Rawson Station in 2016 The view between Queensboro Plaza and the 33rd and Rawson Station in 2016 John Sanderson/Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Then: Overpass to Queensboro Plaza in 1963 Overpass to Queensboro Plaza in 1963 Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Now: Overpass to Queensboro Plaza in 2016 Overpass to Queensboro Plaza in 2016 John Sanderson/Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Then: Main Street, Flushing, in 1923 Main Street, Flushing, in 1923 G. W. Pullis/New York Transit Museum Collection Now: Main Street, Flushing, in 2016 Main Street, Flushing, in 2016 John Sanderson/Courtesy of the New York Transit Museum Ad Up Next Close 'Emoji Movie' perv charged with lewd act HOWELL, N.J. — Authorities say a man has been charged... 6 View Slideshow Back Continue Share this: Facebook

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The 7 train is far from perfect — delays and poisonous paint chips and all — but without it, Queens wouldn’t be Queens.

A new exhibit at the New York Transit Museum’s Grand Central Gallery Annex, titled “7 Train: Minutes to Midtown,” covers more than 100 years of the borough’s first subway line. Through objects and photos new and vintage, it shows how the train transformed a once-bucolic borough of cornfields and farmland into one of the densest urban areas in the world.

‘I think everybody who rides the 7 train thinks about it as their lifeline.’

“[The 7 Train] helped make Queens what it is,” says Jodi Shapiro, associate curator at the Transit Museum. “I think everybody who rides the 7 train thinks about it as their lifeline — to go to work, to get really amazing food, to see some really incredible things, to meet incredible people.

“It is one of the most beloved lines.”

Most of New York’s early subway lines were built to serve places where people already lived. But the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) Flushing line, which publicly became the 7 in 1948, was built to encourage growth in the city’s most rural outer borough.

It worked. The show demonstrates how the Flushing line prompted a real estate and industrial boom in the area even before its first stations opened in 1915. Between 1910 and 1930, the borough’s population jumped from 284,000 to 1,079,129.

“From Long Island City all the way east to Corona and Flushing, all the neighborhoods started becoming urbanized,” Shapiro says.

Rolls Royce, Standard Oil, Tiffany and other firms expanded into the borough, and some even built affordable housing for their workers. The neighborhoods along the line continued to evolve, as more workers, businesses and residents moved in, and the show’s photos illustrate their transformation from horse-and-buggies and brick single-family homes to automobiles and glass towers.

One hundred years later, the 7 is still changing the makeup of New York. Its 2015 expansion into Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, Shapiro says, “really brings the story full circle.”

“7 Train: Minutes to Midtown” runs through Oct. 29 at the New York Transit Museum’s Gallery Annex at Grand Central Terminal. Free; NYTransitMuseum.org.