23 Street
23 Street on the Lexington Avenue subway line has two side platforms for the 4 track line. The stop received a renovation in the 1980s that removed most of the original detailing, although there are areas in a few places with little terra-cotta decorative squares that look like their holding up the cross beams of the ceiling with mosaic 'pillars' beneath, there are view areas with original terra-cotta crown molding. The rest of the northern ends of the platforms though have modern brown brick walls, along with those fare control areas that also have large round green pillars. Both platforms also have white tiled columns with 23s tiled on them. The southern end of the platforms where the extension was built has mosaic decorations a green trimline with a brown boarder and white 23s behind it. There are also brown 23Rd name tablets and beneath these are IND style arrows for the station exits.
The exits from the downtown platform have no token booths left. At the southern end three high turnstiles lead out to a streetstair at the NW corner of Park Avenue and 22 Street, this staircase looks like a regular IRT one exit it has no globes and instead one of the square silver 1980s era square posts at the staircase entrance. Towards the northern ends of the platform is the original fare control area substantially modified. The fence diving the fare control area is where the arts for transit installation is, and now unstaffed turnstiles this leads to a conventional SW corner street stair this one also has a metal square but just the old M logo on top no second block. The NW corner entrance leads up through the basement of a building by abandoned storefronts doors inside that say Credit Swiss above them and up a staircase to the street with a unique silver sign that says subway above the sign for Walgreens there.
The uptown platform at its northern end has turnstiles out to the still staffed fare control area with a token booth and a single street stair up to the NE corner of 23 Street and Park Avenue South also with a silver post outside of it. At the SE corner there are two streetstairs, these are of the silver sides 1970s verity and meet at an intermediate landing with a dry cleaners before going down to fare control. There is a southern fare control area to 22 Street as well with unstaffed turnstiles that lead to two streetstairs. The one on the NE corner looks typical complete with green globes, the SE corner has the globes removed and a 1980s square silver post.
The station was a "Key Station" and recieved a light renvation (all the platform columns corners are now metal plates, for example) that included building two new elevators connecting each platform with the street. These elevators are of the frosted glass variety with a glass canopy over the elevator entrance, and opened in December 2016, both going right out to slight bulb outs along 23 Street, right alongside the crosstown bus lane. The Downtown platform is at the NW corner of 23 Street & Park Avenue South, the Uptown platform's at the NE corner of 23 Street & Park Avenue South. This renovation also removed the green clading around the columns in the fare control areas that gave them a circular shape, replacing them with simple small tiled over columns or painted green for their bottom halfs, white for their top halves.
Photo 1: March 16, 2004; 2-6: December 31, 2009; 7-32: August 12, 2011; 33 & 34: September 10, 2013; 34-59: September 24, 2023
