Vintage NYC Buses Take Center Stage at Transit Museum Festival
Decommissioned double-decker Betsy and the city’s first air-conditioned bus highlighted at Brooklyn Bridge Park event
Thousands of history enthusiasts gathered Sunday at Brooklyn Bridge Park for the New York Transit Museum’s annual Bus Festival, a rare chance to step inside vintage vehicles that once moved millions of New Yorkers. The event spotlighted decommissioned double-decker buses and the city’s first air-conditioned model, with six of the museum’s more than 30 buses opened for walk-throughs and close-up looks.
Prominent among the displays was Betsy, a 1931–1947 double-decker coach that carried commuters along Fifth Avenue for 16 years. Betsy demonstrated what drew crowds even as she ferried riders through Manhattan’s mid-20th century. The bus’s star turn came despite her era’s limitations: although the double-decker could hold more passengers than a standard bus, she was decommissioned after only 15 years because the city’s transit system could not sustain the cost of paying both a conductor and a driver. In the 1970s, attempts to revive two-tier operation faced hurdles like low-hanging traffic lights, the curator noted. Betsy was sold in 1961 and spent time in Nevada, Alaska and even Toronto before New York reacquired her as part of the museum’s collection, most of which is stored in a Bronx depot.
"Now that we have accordion buses, those can hold almost as many people," Shapiro said, "though they’re not as charming as double decker buses." In a broader sense, she framed the display as a window into a century of urban life: the colors, seating layouts and advertisements that evolved as the city grew.
Beyond Betsy, the festival showcased a spectrum of museum holdings. A 2016 Ford F750 tunnel-scrubber truck stood out among other non-passenger vehicles, while a green-and-yellow bus from the 1950s served as the first air-conditioned model to hit Fifth Avenue, a milestone cited by visitors as a turning point in city transit comfort. Attendees ranged from bus- and train-obsessed adults to families with curious youngsters, all drawn to the tactile glimpse into a city that once relied on steel, chrome and clever design to move its population.
"I like buses, especially old buses, old trains, old cars," said 81-year-old Brooklynite Paul Haymont. "Nobody’s putting the new ones in a museum." Nearby, 6-year-old James, wearing an MTA-map T-shirt, added that one bus helped his dad feel “like he was back in the 80s,” a sentiment that illustrated how the festival connects generations to a shared urban past. Another attendee, Romen Guaman, 38, expressed enthusiasm for the displays as a form of living history, noting how the vehicles evoke a sense of place that modern transit experiences cannot replicate.
Other highlight vehicles included a 1970s General Motors New Look bus, a hallmark of postwar design, and a swanky electric-blue 1969 Flxible bus that served the Bronx and Staten Island by virtue of its ability to traverse steep terrain. The festival also featured a 1950s green-and-yellow bus tied to the era’s pioneering climate-control technology. Visitors could walk through several of these vehicles, observing the way interior spaces, seating configurations and advertising panels evolved across decades.
Shapiro said there are a few more buses in the collection undergoing restoration, including several from the 1940s and 1950s and a double-decker bus from 1917 that has taken more than three years to revive. Preservation work is ongoing, she said, with museum staff coordinating with the Department of Subways and Buses whenever a vehicle reaches a state of readiness for public viewing. The museum also houses stock of the famed orange subway cars slated for phased retirement this year, underscoring the ongoing push to protect historically significant equipment even as new models roll into service. “Things that are sort of different and rare, we always try very hard to preserve,” the curator added, emphasizing the educational value of tangible remnants from the city’s transit era. “Seeing the way the colors change, the way the seating arrangements change, the advertisements change: it’s just a fun way to go back in time without a time machine.”
The festival underscores the museum’s mission to make public transportation history accessible to a broad audience, inviting visitors to compare past and present design choices and consider how urban mobility shaped daily life. For many families, the event is as much about nostalgia as it is about technical curiosity: a way to connect with a city that remains defined in large part by its buses, subways and the people who used them every day. As Brooklyn residents and visitors filed out of the park in the late afternoon sun, the sensory impressions—the scent of old upholstery, the creak of bus doors, the glow of chrome—left a lasting impression about a city that never stops moving, even when its vehicles are halted behind glass and canvas, awaiting their next story.
