[title]
For decades, riding the subway meant commuting alongside New York’s unofficial hometown celebrities: the smiling Miss Subways. Now, some of those icons are reuniting in Times Square for a nostalgia-filled celebration at Ellen's Stardust Diner.
On June 30 at 11am, diner owner and former Miss Subways winner Ellen Hart will host 11 fellow titleholders for a reunion timed to both her 85th birthday and the kickoff to America’s 250th anniversary celebrations. The event promises a rare gathering of women whose faces once appeared within subways between 1941 and 1976.
RECOMMENDED: The New York Transit Museum is launching a city-wide scavenger hunt to celebrate its 50th anniversary
Created by the John Robert Powers agency, the Miss Subways campaign celebrated everyday New Yorkers long before influencers started stopping us on the street to ask us about pop culture. Unlike traditional beauty pageants, the women featured were chosen not just for their looks, but for their ambitions. Posters highlighted dreams of becoming actors, lawyers, pilots and businesswomen—and many of the winners went on to do exactly that.
“America is celebrating a milestone birthday and so am I,” Hart said in a statement. “Every birthday is special, but I’m excited to spend this one with other Miss Subways, and reminisce on what was such a fun time for us that changed our lives.”
Hart herself has had a quintessentially New York story. After winning Miss Subways while attending Jamaica High School in Queens, she and her late husband Irving Sturm opened Ellen’s Café near City Hall before launching the wildly popular retro restaurant Ellen’s Stardust Diner in Times Square. The singing-waitstaff institution has since become a tourist destination and Broadway talent incubator, with many “Stardusters” going on to stage careers.
The rest of the reunion's guest list reads like a cross-section of New York history. Former winners include Sonia Dominguez, who became the first Dominican woman to win the title in 1974; Maureen Walsh Roaldsen, now a court attorney who fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a lawyer; and Heide Hafner, who started at the FBI, learned how to fly and then became a nurse.
For New Yorkers obsessed with old-school city lore, the reunion offers a charming reminder of a more glamorous subway era—and proof that the women who once watched over the trains are still very much an integral part of the city’s story.