A Brooklyn photographer tracked down 50 former Miss Subways for a new Transit Museum exhibit, a first of its kind retrospective on the amazing stories behind the pretty faces that once graced the inside of the city’s trains.
The show will feature “then” and “now” pictures and audio interviews of the women, many of whom came from working-class backgrounds and rose to lead accomplished lives.
The program ran between 1941 and 1976 — it was managed by an ad agency — and to be eligible, a woman has to be a New Yorker who rode the rails.
“It was very exciting,” said Maureen Walsh Roaldson, a 1968 Miss Subway.
When Roaldson won the competition, at 23 years old, she was sent to Richard Nixon’s inauguration, met Fred Astaire and starred in a tourism board promotion called “The Sights and Sounds of New York City at Christmas.”
She ended up going to Brooklyn College in her 30s, and law school in her 40s — but her reputation as a former Miss Subways always preceded her.
“I’d be at one of the receptions and one of the assistant deans would come over and say, ‘I understand you were a Miss Subways,’” she said.
“It’s a little piece of New York City History. I was always very proud.”
Most of the women — about 200 in total — held the title for a month.
Their pictures graced every city bus and subway — an unimaginable honor for women who grew up taking the trains.
“In my neighborhood, I was the movie star,” said Peggy Byrne, Miss Subway 1952 from Brooklyn.
The show — which opens on Oct. 23 at the Brooklyn museum — also features 146 posters from the Miss Subways contest.
Those posters were carefully collected over the past eight years by photographer Fiona Gardner and journalist Amy Zimmer.