Spring Street
Spring Street is an IRT Lexington Avenue line opening local station. The original portions of each platforms have terra-cotta cornucopia Ss on a blue background relief in a relief trim at their original sections and the standard ornate mosaic name tablets spelling Spring St on blue with a blue boarder. Here there are also platform columns that are round and are painted blue before a stripe of gold and white above, in replica to how these would have been painted when the station was opened.
The station platforms were extended in opposite directions, south for the Downtown platform, north for the Uptown platform, making the platforms offset. This means passengers looking to exit the train at this station should be in the second to last car on trains in both directions. The tiling of these platform extensions on each platform is completely different. The uptown platform has a 1950s era extension with turquoise walls and a turquoise line with Spring St written on it. The downtown platform has a more standard extension when compared to other Lexington Avenue IRT stops with a cream colored trimline with a light blue boarder and little white Ss. There are also blue with white text Spring St name tablets, and IND style exit direction tiling for the only exit to Spring Street.
The station has exits directly along each platform. The exits from the downtown platform, which became unstaffed with the token booth removed in 2011 lead to streetstairs up to the SW and NW corners of Spring and Lafayette Street. The uptown platform has a streetstair up to the NE corner and the entrance is located in a building at the SE corner which is really with Cleveland Place that forks off of Lafayette Street.
Superstorm Sandy: The station was closed and in the blackout zone for 5 days during Superstorm Sandy and the downtown platform was a bit tagged by graffiti artists that the MTA didn't remove before the station reopened on Saturday. This is increasingly rare at in service subway stations (the tunnels are still full of graffiti).
Photo 1: November 4, 2003; 2 & 3: March 16, 2004; 4-9: December 31, 2009; 12-24: September 22, 2011; 25-29: September 25, 2012; 30 & 31: October 10, 2012; 32-35: November 3, 2012, just after the station reopened after Superstorm Sandy.
