Exploring Philadelphia’s Abandoned Subway Stations
Closed in 1989 due to low ridership and safety concerns after nearly 60 years in service, SEPTA’s Spring Garden Street Station on the Broad-Ridge Spur is now an abandoned mecca for graffiti artists and urban explorers alike, who are arguably the only people showing the old station any love.
In total, The Broad-Ridge Spur includes the Spring Garden, Fairmount, Race-Vine and Market Street stops. And while today both the Race-Vine and Market Street stops exist in some new/updated form, the Spring Garden stop is completely non-operational and the Fairmount stop, while still partially open, has been left fairly untouched. In our exploration, it looked as though at least half the Fairmount station’s platform was closed to the public. (The half photographed here.)
Check out more photos below, and on the Instagram accounts of @medlowminus and @austinxc04!
Trackbacks
- Eraserhood › Exploring Philadelphia’s Abandoned Subway Stations | Streets Dept
- Exploring Philadelphia’s Abandoned Subway Stations | ATHENSAF
- Meredith Edlow’s Amazing Shots From Inside SEPTA’s Abandoned Subways Stations | Streets Dept
- A Trip Inside Philadelphia’s Abandoned Subway Station | Septa Blog - All the Latest News.
- » Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia: best blogs for travellers
- Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia: best blogs | Maabus.in
- Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia: best blogs for travellers | Maabus.in
- Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia: best blogs for travellers | ACom archives
- Lunchtime Quick Hits | Philadelphia Real Estate Blog
- Streets Dept Presents: The Top 10 Urban Explorations of 2013 | Streets Dept
- » Q&A: Rihanna bought a Conrad Benner photo
- #StreetsDeptTurns5: The 5 Most Popular StreetsDept.com Posts – Ever! | Streets Dept
Streets Dept 
So. Fucking. Cool.
Are the third rails down there still live?
When I was in HS , we used to hang out in the abandoned part of Fairmount Station (which is HUGE by the way). This was about a year after Spring Garden closed.
You could see the station from the end of the old Fairmount station. So one day we decided to walk it. There are some interesting things in the tunnels, including a huge room off to one side that I assume was used for maintenance storage, or civil defense (it’s not far off of Fairmount) and escape ladders.
Once we got to the station itself, it was eerie and cool. Only about 1 in 3 lights worked (this was by design though) and it looked like it was frozen in time. This was well before blight and decay, and before the homeless moved in. It was still pristine (well as “pristine” as a Philly subway station in the 90’s gets anyway) just dark, and cold.
I’ve done a lot of urban exploring, long before it was a thing, well before YouTube and camera phones… This is one of the memories I will never forget.
My one regret is that we never made it to Franklin Square which was the Holy Grail of abandoned stations at the time.