51 Street
The 51 Street Station is a standard dual-contracts local IRT station with the local tracks on an upper level and express tracks down beneath. A probable reason that the 53 Street & Lexington Avenue is so deep to underpin them and has its platform entrances and mezzanine area clearly beneath 53 Street and not Lexington Avenue. The two local side platforms were given early renovations and the former white walls were covered over with brown tiles except where the name tablets and trimline are. It is a busy station and faded peeling yellow step assign decals on the platform where the doors line up are still on both platforms which was a pilot project a few other crowded Lexington Avenue Line Stations received.
The stops main entrance and transfer to the IND E and M lines at Lexington Avenue and 53 Street is at the northern end of the station where a passageway leads from the uptown platform connected to the downtown by an underpass with stair/up escalator cases and an elevator at each end for ADA access to the main entrance area beneath 599 Lexington Avenue that has a grand staircase plaza entrance at its northern end near the SE corner of 53 Street and a more simpler entrance staircase and the only street elevator in an alcove of the building at the NE corner of 52 Street and Lexington Avenue. This passageway allows these staircases to be connected outside of fare control as well as inside with a glass fence. There are three different banks of turnstiles with light screaming in from skylights above before we reach 53 Street.
The platforms also have entrances at 51 Street, their original station entrances. The streetstairs were also given the 1980s renovation motif of continuing the brown brick style up to street level and each has a large square post with a green square and then upper white square with either the old blue M logo or the new MTA logo on it. These for each side consist of short wide staircases up to the turnstiles with token booths that lead out to two streetcars for each corner (NW and SW) of Lexington Avenue and 51 Street from the downtown platform. The stairs to the SW corner are in a unique art-deco style. For the uptown side there are also two street stairs on each (NE and SE) corner.
The downtown platform has an additional entrance at its southern end open Monday-Friday 7am to 7pm consisting of a short seven-step staircase up to some unstaffed turnstiles in the basement of another hi-rise, 560 Lexington Avenue. Right after the turnstiles the stairs continue shortly to another intermediate landing for the Terence Cardinal Cooke-Cathedral Library branch of the New York Public Library, one of its smaller branches before they share a staircase to street level in the entrance plaza of this building at the NW corner of 50 Street. This entrance was modernized, rebuilt and renovated in 2014.
Photo 1: July 28, 2009; 2-33: May 20, 2010; 34-40: August 12, 2011; 41-44: January 30, 2013
