Capitol Hill is the one intermediate stop on the University Link Subway Extension that opened on March 19, 2016. The subway station consists of a large cavern for the station's island platform for the two-track line. The station itself was built using the cut and cover method with tunnel boring machines used to construct the train tunnels from each end of the station. The island platform has a large vaulted ceiling without any interior columns. Track walls are lined with metal with mesh centers over a major portion of them (with stations signs on them). Hanging inside the vaulted ceiling (partially obstructed by support joints) in the center of the station is Jet Kiss two hanging retried navy jets that have been cut apart as if their kissing, the navy seal is clearly visible.
To leave the platform (about a third of the way from the end of each platform) are a set of escalators plus an elevator farther down the platform. These lead to half-mezzanines and the end of the distinctive vaulted ceiling in the middle of the platform. The mezzanines are both tiled in a white and green checkerboard pattern.
The north escalator and elevator (signs say Broadway E & E John Street) reach a mezzanine where passengers jog to the left to reach a second shorter set of escalators next to a staircase and another elevator. These lead up to a small headhouse with a glass wall, next to a ventilation shaft. TVMs are located at street level, under a mural Crossing Pinkies by Ellen Forney. This exit is to the SE corner of East John Street and Broadway. The area surrounding this entrance was an excavated pit during construction and looks like a bare foundation waiting for new buildings as part of a Transit Oriented Development.
The southern escalator and elevator also lead to a mezzanine that have two different exits. The southern elevator leads all the way to surface with an intermediate stop at the south mezzanine and up to a small headhouse. A staircase also leads up to this headhouse using what seem like one of the fire stair staircases down to the platform since it has unfinished looking cinderblock walls. It also arrives at the mezzanine through a passageway and continues down to the platform past a gate with a authorized personnel only beyond this point sign. This small headhouse is at the NW corner of East Denny Way and Nagle Place, across from Carl Anderson Park. It is a similar to the north headhouse and also contains and attached ventilation shaft.
The third entrance is accessed via a corridor that gently slopes upwards from the west side of the mezzanine. It has green walls on one side, and white walls on the other, both angled slightly outward to give a larger sense of depth. This leads to a lower landing area with different colored teal tiles. Here there is another elevator plus a staircases/up escalator, which turns 180 degrees at an intermediate landing to another staircase/up escalator up to the surface. Visible from the entrance (above the intermediate landing) is Walking Fingures by Ellen Forney. This entrance is in a similar covered small entrance building with TVMs and ORCA readers at street level. This exit is located just south of the SW corner of Denny Way and Broadway, located next to a storefront and more empty land that's paved over and fenced off ready for development. Just south of the entrance is the northern terminus of the First Hill Streetcar along the west sidewalk of Broadway, a single track streetcar platform with a shelter.
Photos 1-11 taken on 12 October, 2011; 12-54: 8 March, 2018; 55-64: October
University of Washington
Westlake
