Gun Hill Road
Gun Hill Road is a station on the Dyre Avenue located in an open cut. It was originally a station on the New York, Westchester, and Boston Railway that opened in 1912. This line declared bankruptcy and closed in 1937, with the station reopening as a subway station in 1941.
The station has two side platforms for the four-track line. The station platforms were given an extensive rebuild in 1991 that resulted in the replacement of the former Italian Villa-style columns that held up the platform canopies, with a conventional modern (at the time) canopy structure with blue beams (curved from the back of the platform, no intermediate columns) holding up a wide canopy. Under the canopy are conventional corrugated cream-colored windscreens. This canopy covers the northern half of the Dyre Avenue-bound platform, and northern three quarters of the Manhattan-bound platform. The southern ends of the platforms have a low concrete wall with a tall chainlink fence and views of woods and greenery along the railroad right-of-way.
To leave the station, passengers pass through a station house that was enlarged and rebuilt to allow for the addition two elevators one down to each platform from the station house to make the station ADA accessible, with accessibility at the station arriving on January 7, 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally passengers could enter the station house via a single staircase clad in concrete at the very northern end of each platform, these led up to a small intermediate landing where they curved 90 degrees, and entered a very small fare control area, a single bench overlooked a window down to the tracks. Inside the concrete station house is a simple mosaic molding-line and otherwise cream-colored walls.
Opposite the bench, inside the station house, were the turnstiles, with an emergency exit gate barely able to fit. Next to the turnstiles was not a token booth but the former N,Y,W,and B ticket window converted to become a subway token booth. It contained a window that could be closed off with a metal gate that swung open, and a base below the window containing the orange brick design of the 1970s (that is the aesthetic of 49 Street and Bowling Green) with a silver MTA New York City Transit sign below it, and white text on black signs above the window saying Gun Hill Rd and R-728 (the booths internal number), two MVMs barely fit in the entrance area.
To leave the station, a set of doors leads out to the southern sidewalk of Gun Hill Road in the middle of a single-story shopping district, the aboveground subway station looks like it is just a regular business. One storefront down from the subway entrance is a secondary exit from the Dyre-Avenue bound platform, here a wide staircase leads up to street level (slightly farther down the platform compared to the staircase to the station entrance) and a set of High Exit Turnstiles before passengers reach the street, with a convenience store between the main subway entrance, and this exit. A rool up gate (just like a store has) can close off this exit. This staircase and exit was also extensively changed and removed during the station’s accessibility upgrades and I hope to have more as soon as I am able to revisit this subway station.
Photos 1-6: January 25, 2004; 7-10: February 27, 2005; 11-13: March 19, 2005; 14 & 15: February 4, 2006; 16-24: October 13, 2012;
