Wall Street
Wall Street (and William Street) is the last IRT 7th Avenue (2/3) Line Station before the line goes into the Clark Street Tunnel and into Brooklyn. The station like most in lower Manhattan has many entrances, with four separate fare control areas. The platform itself is a single extremely narrow island platform, that tapers to be less than feet wide at its extreme northern end where it was extended before staying fairly narrow for the rest of its length. This means the staircases along it are all of half-width, not the standard width, these are reminiscent of those at 72 Street & Broadway.
The stop was renovated in 1993, a warn out plaque informs me, it opened in 1918. The platform has sets of turquoise painted columns for most of its length, and simple mosaic Ws along in a standard Vickers era trimline are along the tops of the platform walls. The stations long mezzanine still has exit text mosaics pointing towards various exits. This mezzanine runs for almost the entire length of the station and fare control for three of the stations four exits are along it. There are seven staircases from this mezzanine down to the platform, reminiscent of the IND, just everything at this stations at a much smaller scale.
3 of the station's 4 exits are from this mezzanine. Starting from a bit south of the northern end of the platform, an unstaffed set of turnstiles (there's still the customer assistant's booth), on the west side of the passageway, that are only open during weekday business hours lead to a passageway and staircase up to the lobby of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, a large office building. The only way to reach this entrance is through the building. There's no sign at the glass revolving doors into the building indicating this subway entrance. Photographs of old New York line the passageway that are definitely maintained by the building. This exit is signed in the station as 'Cedar Street &s; William Street'
The next station entrance is also only open during weekdays, but with longer hours (7am to 10pm) it consists of a bank of turnstiles along the east side of the passageway, midway down it. It also has a now unstaffed Customer Assistant Booth. From here a ramp leads downwards (yes deeper beneath) to the large office building 60 Wall Street, a modern building completed in 1989. At the foot of the exit staircases from here lays the Art's for Transit Installation (one of the hardest I can think of to find, completed in 1990) a wall mural piece of 3D art. From here a staircase leads up to the street in the side of the buliding, and a staircase, and an up/down escalator lead up and directly into the public enclosed atrium in the building. The top of this exit is complete with two red (the old system) subway globes within the public atrium (in the buildings required privately operated public space for a floor area bonus under New York City's zoning codes).
The southern end of the mezzanine has the station's original entrances, these are actually on the street. The full time booth entrance is from a bank of turnstiles at the southern end of the intermediate mezzanine. This exit leads to staircases at either northern corner of William Street and Wall Street (Wall Street, west of Williams Street is pedestrians only, in the restricted traffic zone around the Stock Exchange). The NE corner has a slightly more old fashioned and ornate medal entrance that says Interborough Rapid Transit Co-to All Trains.
The final entrance is from its own and wide staircase at the extreme southern (Brooklyn end) of the platform, it leads up to a small landing with a couple of High Entrance Turnstiles, and a tiny 2 regular turnstile bank (with a gate and no sign of where a token booth used to be, perhaps this is a sign of High turnstiles being replaced by regular ones). Street stairs lead out to either southern corner of William & Wall Streets.
Photos 1-39: May 19, 2010; 40-42: September 25, 2023; 43-49: November 28, 2023;
