Due to the accident of history, New York City subway stations feature some interesting architectural quirks, and many have been incorporated into the buildings that sprung up on top of them. Noah Brier recently noticed how many major landmarks – Rockefeller Center and the Port Authority Terminal make his list – feature subway stations that open into their lobbies or basements, and he wondered how many other stations enjoy that quirk. With the help of SAS reader Ian Westcott, Brier put together a thorough, if incomplete, list of stations with subway entrances in them, and as I’ve pondered the list, more come to more.
This feature is of course most prevalent in midtown as real estate developers needed to secure easements from the city during construction of huge skyscrapers. In exchange, these developers often incorporated entrances into their buildings. For instance, when I used to work at 1185 Avenue of the Americas, I could exit the subway directly into my building’s basement and ride up an escalator to the lobby without going above ground. It was quite convenient on stiflingly hot summer mornings or rainy evenings.
Today, many of those building entrances have been shuttered as management companies have not wanted to spend the money to maintain them. The Park Place subway station, for example, features an entrance into the Woolworth Building that is rarely, if ever, open. Anyway, check out Noah’s list and feel free to add some stops. I contributed info about the exits from Atlantic Ave. into the Atlantic Terminal Mall to it.
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A few other subway station to building connections come to mind.
1. A. @ 175th Street, underground passage to GWB bus station.
2. E. @ Sutphin & Archer, escalators & elevators to Airtrain & LIRR.
3. atlantic & Pacific Brooklyn, several subway lines & atlantic Ave LIRR station have access to Atlantic Center including Target.
I love the weird limbo you feel like you’re in when you use these entrances. It’s the same feeling I get when I ride the PATH.
This reminds me of what used to be the biggest example of this:
The few different subways that opened directly into the World Trade Center concourse.
I wonder, when that Calatrava Center finally opens, what kind of access there will be from the E train terminal there.
I just realized that maybe my message was not clear.
I meant that I wonder if there will be access from the existing E train terminal into the Calatrava Center, AND into 1 World Trade Center and 4 World Trade Center.
If there is no underground concourse linking all of the builings, it will just be another example of how the new World Trade Center will be nothing like the old one.
ALSO, I hope those idiots remember to include bathrooms in the Calatrava Center. I assume that everybody here knows what I’m talking about.
Re: The Woolworth Building– the R train City Hall Station also had an entrance (with a single turnstile and token clerk) at the southernmost end. While in high school in the ’70s, I read an article someplace about this sumptuous and seldom used passageway so I went to check it out. Gleaming brass handrails and a coffered, curved ceiling as i climbed and climbed the stairs to the lobby. I think I passed a sub-basement health club on the way to the surface..
2/3 Wall Street exits into the Deutsche Bank building (60 Wall).
TO BEN:
Is THIS statement correct?
(It was posted by somebody onto Noah Brier’s site.)
I mean, when he says “REQUIRED to be”.
“………all new subway stations (2nd Ave line) are required to be inside building space. Not that they need to exit INTO the building itself like you’re talking about here, but they are supposed to use building space, rather than sidewalk space.”
Fulton on the 2/3 (southern end) exits into some building’s basement.
Not sure if this counts, but Chambers on the J Z exits directly under the Muni Building footprint.
Brooklyn Bus,
Do you remember the arcade/’mall’ that led directly into the Sheepshead Bay station? Bay Pizzeria had a window facing it, too.
South Ferry (1) goes directly into the SI Ferry Terminalth Ferry.
argh, terrible edit above, but SIR also exits directly into St. George Ferry Terminal.
The South Ferry IRT “1” station no longer has an entrance directly into the SI Ferry Terminal. The old, curved station did, but since the South Ferry/Whitehall stations have merged, the exit leads to the front entrance of the ferry terminal, but not directly INTO the terminal. The Staten Island Railway does indeed drop you off directly into the St. George Terminal.
I think there’s an exit from the Lex that goes right into Bloomingdale’s.
“a thorough, if incomplete, list”
huh?
What’s wrong with that?