155 Street
155 Street-8 Avenue is the one stop in Manhattan on the Concourse line after it branches off the main Central Park West Line and before it enters the three-tracked Concourse tubes into the Bronx. The station has two side platforms for the three track Concourse line and is the only station in Manhattan that is skipped by a particular subway line during peak direction rush hours only, the D train, when B trains are extended from their normal weekday terminus at 145 Street to Bedford Park Blvd. The stop really should be called 155 Street-Frederick Douglas Blvd since this is the name of 8th Avenue north of 110th Street, where 8th Avenue is named Central Park West, not becoming named 8th Avenue until the southern end of Central Park at 59 Street.
The stop feels extremely overbuilt with a full-length mezzanine leading to just a single exit. If a passenger didn't know what once stood just above this subway station from the day it opened with the IND Concourse Line on July 1st, 1933 to when it held its final sporting event in December 1963, and was then torn down they would wonder why the station has various unusual features designed for extremely high occupancy station. Starting at the station's only entrance, this particularly interesting feature is its only entrance/exit has a quadruple wide staircase up to Frederick Douglass Blvd (formerly named 8th Avenue), at a location in front of a public housing and dead ends north of the station at entrance/exit ramps to the Harlem River Drive. Just south of the station is the elevated highway viaduct structure that takes 155 Street over this valley from Cogan’s Bluff to the Macombs Dam Bridge. This single entrance, then leads to a second quadruple wide secondary staircase at a slight angle before a short ramp angles downwards before reaching a small fare control area with the token booth in the middle of the mezzanine. There is fencing around the outside of fare control area on three sides just, past the most northern staircase down to each platform, with a High Exit turnstile for faster exits from the most northern staircase on the Bronx-bound platform. The open portion of this mezzanine continues with two more staircases down to the platform.
A fence is soon reached that has closed off the rest of this full length mezzanine. The mezzanine also has lots of staircases to help with the crowds that stopped using the station more than 60 years ago. Each side platform has three staircases up to the mezzanine portion that is still open. There are even more staircases that have been abandoned. There are five on the uptown platform and four on the downtown platform. All of these, with the exception of one at the southernmost end of the downtown platform — this one has a fence with a door in it along the platform that leads to another door in the abandoned mezzanine area that has been turned into an area that was used by the police department — have been completely surrounded by what looks like metal sheeting that is painted black, making the staircases look even more abandoned.
The art and design of the station is the long and narrow white brick shaped tiling that seems to be unique to the Concourse line along the platform and mezzanine walls. The name tablets say 155th St-8th Ave and are white text with a dark background and an orange border. The trim is the same orange color with a black border and small 155 tiles below it at regular intervals. Oh, and by the way the reason the station is so complex is that the area it serves is the Polo Grounds Houses (or towers as the welcome sign seems to say). The station was built to serve the New York Giants at their home ballpark.
Photos 1-26: June 24, 2008
