Mrs. Parker seems like a taxi cab type to me, but she did use the subway to get around New York.
The subway was a marvel when Dorothy was a young girl, and almost new. Maybe she took it down to visit her father’s shop on the Lower East Side. The family lived in the neighborhood. If Dorothy rode the train, this is where she would catch the Broadway Line, right in Sherman Square on the corner of Seventy-second Street and Broadway.
In 1918 the Times Square Shuttle train opened in Times Square, and Dorothy was a rider with the others on the subway. It also made her late to the theater. From Vanity Fair, December 1918
I had endeavored with a blind, childlike faith, to reach the theatre in the
subway, and I became hopelessly involved in the shuttle system. I simply couldn’t get out of the thing—for what seemed like hours, I wandered hopelessly about under the city, feeling like Jean Valjean. It seemed as if I would have to spend the remainder of my life underground, and there was one moment of frightful despondency when I nearly hurled myself under a passing train and ended it all. So when, spent and footsore, I eventually did reach the Bijou, I wasn’t in exactly a receptive frame of mind.
This beloved (and damn crowded) Neo-Dutch Colonial kiosk has been here since the turn of the Century. It is located about 200 yards from the home she lived in at 214 W. 72nd Street. It also turns up in a lot of movies and TV shows. A landmark at the intersection of West 72nd Street, Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. Turn around and marvel at the Ansonia, the Dorilton, and the Apple Bank.