Utica Avenue
Utica Avenue is an Fulton Street Subway express Station and was built to be a transfer stop to a subway line under Utica Avenue that was a part of the IND Second System and was never built. An uncompleted cavern for this four-track line two-island platform line still passes through the center of the station and the platform ceilings get extremely low. Before the station was renovated in 1996 there were closed off staircases on the open platforms up to the provisions for these platforms. This means that the station doesn't have the standard mezzanines but does have two exits at either end of the two island platforms for the four tracks. Each of these mezzanines have nearly identical but unique designs. The station is significantly deeper than most stations because of the phantom tracks passing above the current tracks through the station, this means right at the each exit there is a single double length staircase down to each of the island platforms, there is also a central ramp over the express tracks that gradually goes down before a lower mezzanine landing containing a single normal-length staircase down to each side platform.
The eastern end of the station has the full time exit to Utica Avenue, this entrance was modified to make the station ADA accessible, with 3 new elevators opening on June 13, 2014. Today this exit contains two streetstairs that lead up to each side of Fulton Street a bit east (nearly half-way to Stuyvesant Avenue) of the intersection of Utica Avenue/Malcolm X Blvd (a normal 4-way intersection with a street that changes names). A new street elevator was added to the north side of the street with a modern, glass upper street landing for the elevator. After entering the subway system, there is a new ADA ramp that has been added to the side of the current ramp down to the lower mezzanine, nearly at the bottom of this lower mezzanine is a new intermediate landing, four steps above the original landing that still leads down to staircases, this landing contains access to two new platform elevators, one down to each platform.
At the western end of the platform were part-time turnstiles, now open full-time (a Customer Service assistant booth was here until 2012) and still High Entrance/Exit Turnstiles for other times. Two streetstairs lead out to each side of Fulton Street, in front of Fulton Park, between Schenectady Avenue and Stuyvesant Avenue.
The platform's trim is a maroon color, with Utica in the standard individual tiles below it, the station has numerous columns all of which are painted in a similar maroon color.
Photos 1-16: June 25, 2008; 17 & 18: December 30, 2010; 19 & 20: October 11, 2014; 21-30: October 18, 2014
Arts For Transit at Utica Avenue
The Children's Cathedral, 1996
Ceramic Mosaic & Iron grillwork in station ramps
By Jimmy James Green
