TUDOR CITY vs. THE SUBWAY

Though many see the New York City subway system as one of the greater achievements of modern metropolitan life, to the Tudor City advertising copywriter, the subway was a "wearying," "jammed-to-suffocation" enterprise to be avoided at all costs. Among other things, it was a major contributing factor to "New York nerves" that made its  riders "start the day feeling tired" -- and who wouldn't be, given all the "clutching hands" and "elbows in your ribs" with "no courteous ushers" in sight.

Following, a selection of advertisements that pounded the message home. 

Newspaper ad, 1933

1934 Playbill ad, aimed at theatergoers

Newspaper ad, 1929. Danny Deever was the subject of a Rudyard Kipling poem
about a British soldier who was hanged for murder.

Newspaper ad, 1935