Fifteen-year-old Metro New York, one of the city’s two freebie daily papers, will disappear following the sale of assets to Schneps Media, which already owns the other freebie paper amNew York.

A merged paper will be reflagged as amNewYork Metro starting Jan. 6.

“We’ve purchased the assets of Metro New York and Metro Philadelphia,” said Schneps Media president Joshua Schneps, confirming a story that The Post reported on Dec. 30. Metro Philadelphia will continue to be published under its current name.

The staffs of both papers were laid off by former owner Metro US on Friday, but Schneps said some of the employees will be offered jobs at Schneps.

“We have job offers out to about 20 people,” he said. Group publisher Ed Abrams and Philadelphia publisher Susan Peiffer are expected to keep their jobs under the new owners.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Boston Metro was not included in the deal, and its fate is not clear.

On Friday, after Metro New York published its last issue, a farewell was posted on its Twitter page at about 8:40 p.m. Friday.

“Today Metro NY staff was informed that the publication is ceasing operations. We extend a warm farewell to our loyal readers.” The tweet was deleted a short time later.

In the mid-aughts, as free papers proliferated the publishers hoped that they could capture a new class of young urban readers by distributing at subway and transit hubs.

Abrams was the first employee ever hired when Swedish publisher Metro International, which had a string of successful Metros across Europe, introduced the first Metro in Philadelphia in 2003.

Metro New York was started more than 15 years ago, a year after amNew York had debuted.

At its peak, both amNew York and Metro New York were each distributing over 325,000 copies per day.

The New York Times, which at the time owned the Boston Globe, even paid $16.5 million for a 49% stake in Metro Boston to help augment the eroding circulation of the Globe.

But a series of events combined to undermine the papers. By 2009, Metropolitan International, the Swedish company that had aggressively expanded in Europe, North and South America sold its three money losing Metro US titles to a private equity backed firm, Seabay Media.

The recession caused a big falloff in advertising. The MTA also sought to curtail the presence of hawkers on its properties and were replaced in many stations by standalone racks, causing circulation to tumble. And as cellular service became prevalent underground in subways and rail terminals, consumers began turning to their mobile phones for news.

Joshua Schneps said that the newly reflagged amNewYork Metro will be expanding its distribution from its current level of about 150,000 to 175,000 a day.

“It makes sense to strengthen our New York operation and expand into a whole new market in Philadelphia,” he said.

Schneps bought amNew York in October from Newsday, which had laid off the entire staff at the time of the sale. Schneps offered to rehire only three people, and dispatched Robert Pozarycki, who was editing one of Schneps weekly papers, to be its new editor.

The family owned Schneps started with a single paper, the Queens Courier in 1985 and in recent years has added dozens of free weekly papers in the metro area including Gay City News, Park Slope Courier, The Villager, Downtown Express, The Bronx Times Reporter, Westchester Family and the Long Island Press, a monthly in Nassau County the revived the name of a long ago folded daily paper.