WTC-Cortlandt
The WTC-Cortlandt Street Subway station was originally named Cortlandt Street when it opened in 1918 under the dual contacts. This station had traditional terra-cotta tiling with reliefs of a ferry that was operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad and used to connect across the Hudson River to Exchange Place, where the railroad's main Jersey City terminal was.
The station was first extensively renovated in the 1960s when Cortlandt Street was removed as a street in the NYC street grid west of Trinity Place and the station became a subway station entirely under (just below street level) of the World Trade Center superblock, with all access via the World Trade Center’s shopping concourse.
The station was destroyed on September 11, 2001. Although subway service through the World Trade Center site was restored within a year on September 11, 2002, the station’s location in the middle of the World Trade Center site (and lack of importance for regional connectivity, with other nearby subway stations on 1 train and other subway lines, unlike the World Trade Center PATH station) meant that the line reopened with trains passing through a white box. This box was visible from the surface as it was going through the top of the World Trade Center bathtub, just beneath the normal street-level. The subway line could have been left in the open air like the much lower PATH tracks were originally on the bedrock of the World Trade Center Site but this wasn’t done to avoid major further subway line closures during the nearly two-decades long-process to decide what to do with and then rebuild the World Trade Center Subway. While passing through the World Trade Center site, the illuminated white walls, compared to the normal black walls of subway tunnels, was clearly visible and a reminder of this destroyed subway station.
The new station now named WTC-Cortlandt didn’t begin reconstruction until 2015 and didn’t reopen until September 8, 2018 as construction at the World Trade Center became substantially complete. The station consists of two side platforms for the two track subway line, located just beneath the surface of Greenwich Street that has been restored through the new World Trade Center site. These subway platforms are decorated with marble walls that contain monochromatic elevated text woven along the platforms that contain from the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Station name signs are conventional black with a white line signs that interrupt the artwork and say “World Trade Center.” The artwork fits the location of the station very well since the 9/11 Memorial is located at the surface just west of the station (on the footprints of the original twin towers). The middle of the platforms are columnless, both between the tracks and along each side platforms, with tightly spaced white columns only at each end of the platforms; some of these columns have column signs that say “WTC Cortlandt” on them. The only place along the platforms where the station’s full name is written.
For entrances we will begin our tour at the northern end of the South Ferry-bound platform. Here there is a bank of turnstiles at the extreme northern end, that when I visited in 2018 it literally led to an under construction elevator and staircase with the turnstiles taped off. By 2022 these became a new entrance via elevator and staircase up to Vesey Street. Next on the South Ferry-bound platform are an elevator and two staircases down to the free crossunder within fare control beneath the platforms. This crossunder leads to a fare control area accessed through doors on the same level of the main floor of the Oculus, directly above the MVMs and near the turnstiles on a lower level into the PATH system.
Next, tucked just above the main entrance to PATH, on the balcony level just beyond the end of the Oculus, glass doors lead to an entrance directly along the Bronx-bound 1 train platform. This entrance is directly above signs for PATH to New Jersey, and the PATH’s turnstiles are visible just below it. This is where the station's token booth is located.
Continuing to the southern end of the platform, the 242 Street-bound platform contains an exit leading down a few steps (not wheelchair accessible) leading down to the South Concourse beneath 4 World Trade Center. In 2018 this entrance was next to a Bose Store.
Across from here, near the southern end of the South Ferry-bound platform is a staircase down to a small entrance area above the southern end of the PATH station entrance and mezzanine. The southern end of the South Ferry-bound platform contains another entrance directly up the street, via turnstiles that lead up to two glass staircases on the west side of a rebuilt Greenwich Street (only open to official vehicles, and not a public street, since it’s within the security perimeter of the World Trade Center), this exit is directly alongside the South Pool of the WTC memorial, where the South Tower once stood.
Photos 1-3: July 22, 2008 at the Transit Museum; 4: November 7, 2016; 5-25: October 5, 2018; 26-62: October 7, 2018
Station Subway Lines (1989-September 11, 2001)
