{"id":191199,"date":"2026-04-09T18:53:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191199\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T18:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T18:53:14","slug":"bam-film-series-celebrates-hoyt-schermerhorn-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191199\/","title":{"rendered":"BAM Film Series Celebrates Hoyt-Schermerhorn Station"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hoyt\u2013Schermerhorn Streets station has always been a bit of a shapeshifter. To commuters, it\u2019s always been a Downtown Brooklyn workhorse. But to filmmakers, it\u2019s played everything from Union Square to a fantasy realm. Now, as the station turns 90, Brooklyn Academy of Music<\/a> is giving it top billing.<\/p>\n

Running from April 9\u201316, \u201cHoyt-Schermerhorn: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors<\/a>\u201d is a weeklong film series dedicated entirely to movies shot in and around the station. Programmed by Adam Goldberg as part of BAM Film 2026, the lineup is both a birthday celebration and a cinematic scavenger hunt, where spotting a familiar tile or platform becomes part of the fun.<\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED:\u00a0The 101 best New York movies of all time<\/a><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever felt like a subway scene looked suspiciously like Brooklyn when it was supposed to be somewhere else, you\u2019re probably right. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, reporter April O\u2019Neil appears to descend into City Hall, only to emerge at Hoyt-Schermerhorn.\u00a0In the classic NYC movie\u00a0The Warriors, the station stands in for multiple stops across the city, including 96th Street and Union Square, with plenty of clues hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n

First opened 90 years ago, in 1936, the station once served as a key transfer point between the IND Crosstown and Fulton Street lines. But after service changes in the 1940s, parts of the station were effectively mothballed. Those unused tracks and platforms became a dream setup for film crews: they were not only controlled and accessible, but (crucially) out of the way of actual riders.<\/p>\n

The result means decades of screen time across wildly different genres. There\u2019s gritty, pre-Giuliani New York in The Taking of Pelham 123, where the station doubles as a Manhattan tunnel during a hostage crisis. There\u2019s been a surreal spectacle in The Wiz, where it\u2019s become the Emerald City subway, all glitter and menace. And then there\u2019s pure \u201880s chaos, with masked villains and subway chases that feel lifted straight from the city\u2019s rougher years.<\/p>\n

That \u201cbad old days\u201d energy is part of the appeal, according to BAM programmers, who see the series as a snapshot of a grittier, more cinematic New York. But it\u2019s not all doom and gloom. The subway, after all, has always been a stage that\u2019s been romantic, chaotic and communal. This isn\u2019t just a lineup of films, but rather a reminder that one unassuming station has quietly played a starring role in New York\u2019s on-screen mythology.<\/p>\n

The next stop is Hoyt-Schermerhorn\u2014and this time, it\u2019s the main character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hoyt\u2013Schermerhorn Streets station has always been a bit of a shapeshifter. To commuters, it\u2019s always been a Downtown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13687,158,9,24,55,54,13688,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-191199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-categories-movies","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-city-news","14":"tag-news-movies","15":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}