Grand Street
Grand Street is a unique subway station that is the 12th newest subway station, the one intermediate station opened on November 26, 1967 as part of the Chrystie street connection. The stop unlike its closest counterpart, the 57 Street/6 Avenue terminal (that opened in 1968 also as part of service improvements designed to help run more subway service through the Chrystie Street connection) was not designed to handle crowds like that station (it has lots of exits and a full length mezzanine) was even though Grand Street’s location, now in an extremely bustling portion of Chinatown means it is the 43 most busy subway station in the system (57 Street is 96th with about half the ridership). The station also has had to contend with shuttle service on and off during the three times the north side of the Manhattan Bridge had to be closed, from 2001-2004 (a shuttle bus also ran to Canal Street and across the Manhattan Bridge to DeKalb Avenue), in 1995, and 1986-1988 making passengers contend with the Grand Street Shuttle up to Broadway-Lafayette or West 4 Street, since the switches at the station and around the station basically require this shuttle train to run up and down a single track. The station has two side platforms for what is currently a two-track line. The platforms were originally designed to be turned into island platforms with connections to the Second Avenue subway, with some portions of tunneling for the Second Avenue subway as a cut and cover subway completed in the 1970s, but the current plans for the Second Avenue subway have it stopping at Grand Street, with connections to the B and D trains but in a much lower deep-level bored tube to avoid having as many disruptions at the surface and connections via a new lower mezzanine between the current station platforms and new island platform (in the drawings) for Phase IV of the Second Avenue subway that doesn't currently have a construction start date.
The stop's two platforms are narrow with column-less walls except where the small mezzanine is and a blue 1960s trimline with Grand St written in white at regular intervals, the only indication of the stations name. There is a single exit on a small mezzanine accessed by two staircases up from the middle of each platform. This mezzanine has a newsstand and fully staffed bank of turnstiles and streetstairs out to one at the NW corner of Grand and Chrystie Streets, and two near the NE corner along Sara D. Roosevelt Park.
Photos 1-16: July 30, 2009; 17-21: August 15, May 24, 2010; 23-28: December 19, 2012
Trains of Thought
Abstract Red sculptures of subway cars on the mezzanine walls
By Andrea Gardner and Sally Heller
Station Subway Lines (2000-2004)
