Metropolitan Av
Metropolitan Av (Grand St) is the only independent G train station to be fully renovated between 1999 and 2000. The station has the usual 2 side platforms for the two track Crosstown Line. The station platforms themselves have quite low ceilings, green trim with no station tiling below it and green name tablets that say Metropolitan Ave with Grand Street in smaller letters beneath. Some of these have tiling below them that say 'To Street & Transfer'.
The station was built with a more than full length mezzanine and exits at each end of the station. At some point (before the renovation) a Transit Police (now NYPD) police headquarters was built along the east wall of the mezzanine, allowing a narrower passageway along the west wall for passengers to still access the full-length mezzanine.
After the station's renovation, most of the mezzanine was closed off to the public except for a small portion at the northern end of each platform, here just before police headquarters, two staircases one at the extreme northern end of the platform and another about a car length from it, lead up to a small, still open portion of the mezzanine.
At the northern end of this mezzanine are two distinctive fare control areas with a passageway between them that provides the transfer to the L train. On the east side are turnstiles and the station's token booth leading out to two streetstairs. One leads up to the SW corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Union Avenue, the second is just down the block to the NW corner of Keap Street and Union Avenue (that begins at an angle from Union Avenue). Across from this main fare control area, two High Entrance/Exit turnstiles and an Exit Only turnstile lead out to a single streetstair along the east side of Union Avenue, just across from the 3-way intersection where Keap Street begins. Passengers transferring to the L train curve to the east around this smaller fare control area and reach a ramp that runs through a short but narrow passageway. In the middle of the ramp, a staircase leads down to an underpass under the L tracks for trains to Manhattan, while Canarsie-bound passengers just stay on this ramp up to reach the end of the L train's Canarsie-bound platform.
At the southern end of the platform, the platform was narrowed, with rooms carved out between the three left intact emergency exit staircases up from each platform to the former southern end of the mezzanine. The platform was re-designed here to only accommodate 6 cars with a full 10 car train still able to open (on account of weekend construction, where G trains have replaced all F service to Coney Island or emergency re-routes of F trains because of issues somewhere in Manhattan) but passengers in the southernmost cars of the rare 10 car trains exited to a very narrow platform that was basically just a tactile warning strip before the platform pillars, signs made it ambiguous if this was considered public space and part of the platform, or a space that passengers weren’t supposed to be in.
On February 28, 2019, the formerly closed southern half of the mezzanine was reopened to passengers, the 3 former emergency exit staircases from each platform lead up to a now reopened mezzanine, where the mezzanine ramps up before reaching a bank of turnstiles. From here, reopened streetstairs (they were emergency exits on the street visible while the mezzanine was closed) up to the NE corner of Powers Street and Union Avenue, and the NW corner of Hope Street and Union Avenue (just across the street from Power Street, both of these streets change names at the station, with Hope Street running at a different angle than Powers Street). There is still a closed portion of the mezzanine (that was always outside of fare control) that continues one more block south to now slabbed over and abandoned streetstairs that once led out to the NE and NW corners of Grand Street and Union Avenue, so the station did once provide exits to Union Street, the secondary name on the station's name tablets.
Photo 1: February 14, 2006; 2-10: August 17, 2008; 11-68: September 24, 2023;
Arts For Transit at Metropolitan Avenue-Lorimer Street
Signs of Life, 1999
Ceramic and Glass Mosaic on mezzanine walls
By Jackie Chang
