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The “E” subway line in Forest Hills added another Golden Year to its tally by celebrating its 70th anniversary Friday with riders milling in and out of the subway seemingly oblivious to its birthday and the small party gathered outside.

A dozen community members, including Jeff Gottlieb of the Central Queens Historical Society, met at the subway station on Continental Avenue to mark the historic day and commemorate the line’s contribution to the neighborhood.

“It’s really revolutionized Forest Hills and Rego Park,” Gottlieb said.

The first subway cars rolled through the 3-1/2-mile addition Dec. 29, 1936, shortly after 7 in the morning. The new tracks and stations linked the Jackson Heights line to Kew Gardens and could whisk people from Queens to Manhattan in less than 40 minutes. The nickel fare meant the working class could afford a ride and made the Forest Hills area accessible to new groups of people.

The area, once limited to the white and wealthy, exploded with development, particularly on Queens Boulevard and Austin Street. The $110 million project received $43 million in federal money, and was heralded by George Upton Harvey, Queens Borough President in 1936, as what would transform Queens Boulevard into the “Park Avenue of Queens.” Apartment buildings sprouted around the new station and the streets bustled with new businesses.

In a New York Times article that covered the official first run, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia said at the time: “For the first time New York had the vision to look forward and plan for the future. You can’t run a $2,000,000-a-day enterprise like the City of New York without a well-thought-out plan for the next two, three, six or even 10 years.”

The well-thought out plan exceeded LaGuardia’s expectations and is still chugging along 70 years later and also grew to include stops at 169th and 179th streets.

The new line was also unique in its color coded system. Robert Cuervo, a professor of political science at Pace University, said the color strips at each station were especially helpful to immigrants who could not read English. The new subway paradoxically created and alleviated development because while new apartment building sprung up during that time—Mayfair, Fairview and York Apartments, to name a few—it also decreased street congestion.

The subway line also set the stage for the modern train cars used today and also signaled the beginning of the end of elevated lines—a change Mayor La Guardia whole-heartedly welcomed in The New York Times piece where he declared: “I’ll tear down all the existing ones I can, if the Transit Commission permits it.”