125 Street
125 Street is the one intermediate stop on A and D Express trains when they skip 8 stations on their Central Park West Express runs from 59 Street to Inwood, Washington Heights or the Bronx. It is an 8 minute one-way run from 59 Street to 125 Street. The stop is located in the heart of Harlem and is the station Duke Ellington is referring to in his signature song Take the “A” Train.. The ventilation shafts into the station, in some ways perform too well, or are perhaps poorly designed. The station floods a little during heavy rains, and the platform mirrors the weather outside, when it’s extremely cold out the station is an extremely cold place to wait for a train (nearby stations like 145th or 168th because of their depth and the location of their subway grates for ventilation are more pleasant and warmer places to transfer trains on winter days.
The station consists of two island platforms for the 4-track line. These platforms have green platform columns, and green platform wall trim with a black border along with small 125s one tile beneath the trim.
The station was built with a full-length mezzanine, but this mezzanine has been carved-up into two different sections including two different abandoned exits with an station department employee taking up most of the now non-public space.
Starting from the northern end of the mezzanine, streetstairs lead down from the SE and SW corners of 127 Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. These streetstairs lead to a now unstaffed bank of turnstiles on the mezzanine where two staircases lead down to the Downtown Platform, and one to the Uptown Platform. There used to be a Maroon Customer Assistance booth here.
Continuing down the mezzanine there were once exits to the NW and SE corners of 126 Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. These have been abandoned and would today lead to the middle of a large Station Department Employee Faculty.
Continuing south, the open portion of the mezzanine resumes with two staircases and an elevator, making the station ADA accessible between them. These staircases are about a quarter of the way from the southern end of the platforms. These lead up to a bank of turnstiles and facing the station’s full time token booth. From here, streetstairs lead out to all four corners of 125th Street/Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd along with an elevator up to the SW corner. This elevator was installed in the first decade of the 2000s with a design of a green steel framework and some glass panels allowing views into the elevator.
The mezzanine continues south with a wall closing it off from the station's main entrance, another half-block to be above the southern ends of the platforms. Here was once a streetstair up to the east side of St. Nicholas Avenue midblock between 125 and 124 Streets. There was also an entrance to the west side of the street, that had doors into a building (potentially a long-abandoned shopping arcade) before reaching the surface inside a storefront. No real evidence of these exits exist on the surface.
Photo 1: July 31, 2004; 2 & 3: April 15, 2007; 4-9: July 15, 2008; 10: June 9, 2009; 11: November 5, 2012; 12: July 26, 2013; 13: October 10, 2014; 14-23: November 25, 2023;
