174-175 St
174-175 Streets (official name, lots of station signs and the mosaics just say 174-175 Street or St) is a Grand Concourse Line local station with two side platforms for the three track line in a section of the Bronx where the Grand Concourse is raised above the surrounding street grid with the streets of 174 Street and 175 Street in addition to the Cross-Bronx Expressway crossing in tunnels beneath both the subway line and station and the Concourse itself. This gives the station a very interesting layout including a subway exit that requires passengers to go down to reach it (Kingsbridge Road also has one)!
The station's has the yellow color scheme with a two tile wide yellow trimline that has a narrow black boarder. The name tablets say 174th-175th St. and are white text on black with a yellow border. The platform and mezzanine area columns are yellow. The black '174s' or '175s' very their presence depending upon the end of the station the passenger is waiting at. The southern-half of the station has 174s, the northern half 175s.
The full-time entrance and token booth is at the southern end of the station, a staircase leads up from entrance doors in the 174 Street underpass (north sidewalk) to a small fare control area. Here are the turnstiles and a single staircase leads up to the very southern end of each platform. There is an additional staircase on the west side of the fare control area to an upper landing at the level of the uptown platform where passengers can exit via two High Entrance Turnstiles. A mosaic sign still directs passengers to continue down the staircase to reach the "Change Booth" (tokens only started in 1953, before passengers deposited at nickel until 1948 and dime until 1953 when the fare was raised to 15 cents necessitating tokens.) This staircase continues to a single street stair along the east side of the Grand Concourse just above the overpass. This street stair is off the stone wall variety. Inside the station there is still evidence of an abandoned second staircase that served this exact function to west side of the Concourse. On the downtown platform there is a locked gate where this corridor used to have its small fare control area to provide access to that platform, along with a staircase in the existing lower mezzanine area before the turnstiles that says Passageway Closed.
The second entrance is at the 175 Street end of the station and is slightly more towards the middle of the platform. Two staircases lead up from each platform to a small mezzanine area within fare control with a crossover. After the turnstiles that are now unstaffed, and the CSA abandoned booth locked behind its own fence the mezzanine is huge and very little of it looks abandoned. This wideness is just for a street stair out to either side of the Concourse above 175 Street's overpass. There is also evidence of a closed exit to the south side of 175 Street's underpass because of a gated and locked staircase down between the staircases up to the open mezzanine on each platform and a gated and locked staircase down outside of fare control in the mezzanine area. On the underpass itself is some metal sheeting where the subway entrance used to be, including some peepholes into a small abandoned, all the lights still on mezzanine area.
Photos 1-8: July 29, 2004; 9-35: January 3, 2011; 36-44: January 6, 2011
