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Which is the oldest station in the subway?


MAA89

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Does anyone know when the earliest station(s) still in use were built. I know the stations along the Far Rockaway and Rockaway Park branches of the (A) were built by the Long Island Rail Road back in the 1880s. Are there any older than that?

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Does anyone know when the earliest station(s) still in use were built. I know the stations along the Far Rockaway and Rockaway Park branches of the (A) were built by the Long Island Rail Road back in the 1880s. Are there any older than that?

 

I think they are some stations along the Broadway El/Jamaica Lines opened in the late 1880's!

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I think it was the IRT Third/2nd Ave EL 1870s for that and the IRT 9th Ave Line 1960s, as what Wiki States. But thats for the EL before 1973. IRT the oldest is the ones from 157th to 42nd St TSQ and Grand Central to City hall loop

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I think it was the IRT Third/2nd Ave EL 1870s for that and the IRT 9th Ave Line 1960s, as what Wiki States. But thats for the EL before 1973. IRT the oldest is the ones from 157th to 42nd St TSQ and Grand Central to City hall loop

 

Yeah but those EL's are torn down now so they don't exist. Those oldest station still in use is Bway Junction on the (J)(Z), opened 1884

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Oldest station in continus day to day rapid transit service is Gates Ave on the J. Opened as part of the "Old Main line"/Lexington ave El on it's opening day of may 13 1885, one month before broadway junction on June 14th. the 1884 date isn't right.

http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Scripting/ArchiveView.asp?BaseHref=BEG/1885/05/13&Page=1&skin=BE

 

Well, I can't argue with that :cool:

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There are actually several answers to this question. The above answers are correct which pertain to the elevated lines. But the oldest section of subway stretches from City Hall to 33rd Street on the East Side, the Grand Central and Times Square platforms, and from 50th Street to 145th Street on the West Side, all of which opened on October 27th, 1904.

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Oldest station in continus day to day rapid transit service is Gates Ave on the J. Opened as part of the "Old Main line"/Lexington ave El on it's opening day of may 13 1885, one month before broadway junction on June 14th. the 1884 date isn't right.

 

http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Scripting/ArchiveView.asp?BaseHref=BEG/1885/05/13&Page=6&skin=BE

 

the above link is the 4PM edition of Brooklyn Daily Eagle for wed.May 13th, 1885. below is a link from another edition from the same day with the opening day story.

 

http://eagle.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/Default/Scripting/ArchiveView.asp?BaseHref=BEG/1885/05/13&Page=1&skin=BE

 

Thanks, great work.

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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.5; en-us; T-Mobile G1 Build/CRB43) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1)

 

Broadway Junction wouldn't count for that reason either. The entire structure was rebuilt, and it's really more like a different station built in the same location. (You can see the original layout, c1910 right before the reconstruction, in the Tracks of NY book, though the BMT edition is extremely hard to find. I managed to buy a crudely copied one years ago).

 

The oldest stations using the original infrastructure (only modified for heavy rail use, and much later, concrete platforms) would be the next stations down the line, from Alabama-Crescent. Alabama and Van Siclen got all new canopies as well, but the others still have those original old BRT el canopies, and thus look the oldest.

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Aqueduct Racetrack is pretty old, from 1956 and it has not been rebuilt since then. I remember when it was closed down for a few years and the old token turnstyles were there from the 50s. The old repeater room was there and everything, unfortunately it was ransacked and destroyed and they emptied out all of the rooms, removed the token booth and installed metrocard revolving gates. The platform and foundation is still original.

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I'm not sure whether it was closed or not, but the entire area of the structure was rebuilt, and is nothing like what it was before.

 

I'm looking at the Tracks of NY, and the station was called "Manhattan Junction", and on the Bway line, had two "local" style platforms (on the outside of the structure; unlike the island platforms elsewhere, and there now), and, now get this; the City Line bound platform curved around to be shared with the Manhattan bound Fulton St. el station (which also had an island platform in the middle). Next to this joint U shaped platform, you had the two connecting tracks between the Bway and Fulton St lines. You could go from any direction from one line to the other, and it was all grade crossings. Then, you had the entrance to the yard, which was also at grade. The complex junction whose remains are there today was not there. It was a very simple layout.

Then, the Fulton and Canarsie shared the same two track line through Atlantic, and after another station called Eastern Pkway (this would have been Pitkin, which was to be Eastern Pkwy before they turned it towards Bushwick running next to East NY Ave.) where they split off at grade.

 

So I would say that was a very different station in the same location. You couldn't really call this station the oldest, as the entire infrastructure is newer than the ones down the line.

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If a station was rebuilt from scratch, it looses its title as the oldest. The oldest station in the entire system is Alabama Avenue which opened on February 2nd, 1885.

 

ALabama avenue was rebuilt a few years ago and the steel that supports the line/platform isnt from 1885 either.

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