The 42nd Street–Bryant Park/Fifth Avenue station is an underground New York City Subway station complex, consisting of stations on the IRT Flushing Line and IND Sixth Avenue Line. Located at 42nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) in Manhattan, it is served by the 7, D and F trains at all times, the B and M trains on weekdays, and during rush hours, the <7> train in the peak direction and the <F> train in the peak direction. A free passageway from the IND platforms to the station, served by the is open during the day from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. The Times Square transfers are announced only on New Technology Trains.
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) built the Flushing Line platform, which opened in 1926 as the first part of an extension of the Queensboro Subway (today's Flushing Line) from Grand Central to Times Square. The Sixth Avenue Line platforms opened in 1940, completing construction of the first phase of the Independent Subway System (IND). Free out-of-system walking transfers between the stations on the two lines began being provided on weekdays in 1967, and an underground passageway was completed in 1971, allowing free in-system transfers. In 1998, the entire station complex was renovated. A free transfer to the Times Square station was opened in 2021 with the completion of a renovation project on the 42nd Street Shuttle. There are plans to add elevators to the station to make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
The IRT station has one island platform and two tracks and runs from west to east. The IND station has two island platforms and four tracks; it runs from north to south and is west of the IRT station. There is a mezzanine above the IRT platform, connected by a corridor to a mezzanine above much of the IND platform. A separate mezzanine exists above the extreme north end of the IND station. The 42nd Street–Bryant Park/Fifth Avenue complex served 17,213,702 passengers in 2019, making it the 13th busiest station in the subway system.
History Planning for a subway line in New York City dates to 1864. However, development of what would become the city's first subway line did not start until 1894, when the New York State Legislature authorized the Rapid Transit Act. The Rapid Transit Construction Company, organized by John B. McDonald and funded by August Belmont Jr., signed the initial Contract 1 with the Rapid Transit Commission in February 1900, in which it would construct the subway and maintain a 50-year operating lease from the opening of the line. Belmont incorporated the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in April 1902 to operate the subway. As part of the project, a section of tunnel under 42nd Street was constructed between the intersections of Park Avenue/41st Street and Broadway/47th Street. Degnon-McLean was awarded the contract to build this section of the line, and construction began on February 25, 1901.
The first section of the line opened on October 27, 1904. The line did not serve Bryant Park directly; the nearest stations were Times Square, a local stop, and Grand Central, an express stop. Additional lines opened in 1918, thereby dividing the original line into an H-shaped system. The old route under 42nd Street became the 42nd Street Shuttle, which ran between Times Square and Grand Central without any intermediate stops.
IRT Flushing Line The Dual Contracts were formalized in March 1913, specifying new lines or expansions to be built by the IRT and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT). The Dual Contracts involved opening the Steinway Tunnel as part of the new Flushing subway line. The route, traveling under 41st and 42nd Streets in Manhattan, was to go from Times Square through the tunnel over to Long Island City and from there continue toward Flushing. The section of the tunnel between Grand Central–42nd Street and Queens had opened on June 22, 1915.
Construction In July 1920, the New York State Public Service Commission announced it would extend the Flushing Line two stops west to Times Square, with an intermediate station under Bryant Park. The western end of the Bryant Park station would be east of Sixth Avenue, while the eastern end would be about west of Fifth Avenue. The 42nd Street Association, a local civic group, regarded the station as very important. In May 1921, it was expected that contracts for the extension would be advertised shortly.
On November 9, 1921, the New York State Transit Commission opened up the contract for the extension for bidding. The extension would take a slightly different route than the one specified in the Dual Contracts. The original proposal had the line constructed under 42nd Street to a point just to the east of Broadway, which would have forced riders transferring to the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line to walk a long distance. On November 22, 1921, the Powers-Kennedy Contracting Corporation was awarded a contract to construct the extension on a low bid of $3,867,138, below the estimated cost of over $4 million. This low bid was the narrowest margin ever recorded for any large city contract, beating out the next highest bidder by 0.7 percent. While the contractor was provided four years to complete work, engineers expected to reduce the time needed to do so to as little as three years. Since work on the project had to be completed underneath the foundations of several large buildings, such as theatres, and the north end of the New York Public Library, the contractor had to provide a $1 million bond. The project was expected to reduce crowding on the 42nd Street Shuttle by enabling riders to use the Queensboro Subway to directly access Times Square. 24,000 of the estimated 100,000 daily shuttle riders transferred to and from the Queensboro Subway. The line was to extend as far as Eighth Avenue to connect with the proposed IND Eighth Avenue Line.
Powers-Kennedy started excavating the line westward from Grand Central in May 1922. The Flushing Line extension was to run beneath the original line from Vanderbilt to Fifth Avenue, running as little as under the original line. The tunnel also had to pass under a sewage line at Madison Avenue. The construction of the Fifth Avenue station required underpinning the New York Public Library Main Branch and extending the library's foundation downward. The subway tunnel ran below ground level. During construction, workers took precautions to avoid interrupting the flow of traffic above ground and interfering with preexisting tunnels. The contractors had completed the tunnels to Fifth Avenue by May 1923. Local civic groups advocated for the Fifth Avenue station to be used as a temporary terminal while the permanent terminus at Times Square was being completed. By the end of 1923, the Transit Commission had allocated $50,000 for the construction of a temporary crossover east of the Fifth Avenue station.
The temporary terminal at Fifth Avenue was nearly complete by February 1926. The station had two entrances on the south side of 42nd Street (one next to the library and the other next to the park). A third entrance was placed within the Stern's building on the north side. Stern's funded the construction of the entrance inside its building, which also included storefront windows. The entrance through the Stern's building did not open along with the rest of the station, and opened at a later point. These entrances connected with a mezzanine above the platform. The platform was to be long, though only a section would be used initially as a double crossover to the east of the station still needed to be used while it was a terminal. With the completion of the line to Eighth Avenue, the switch would be removed, and the platform could be extended.
Opening and unification
The Fifth Avenue station opened on March 22, 1926, extending the IRT Flushing Line one stop to the west from the line's previous terminus at Grand Central. Even so, many Flushing Line passengers traveling from Queens to the West Side of Manhattan tended to transfer to the shuttle at Grand Central, rather than leave the train at Fifth Avenue. The Flushing Line was extended to Times Square on March 14, 1927, following various delays. The northern section of Bryant Park, which had been closed for four years during the line's construction, was restored shortly afterward. By 1930, a fourth entrance to the Fifth Avenue station was being constructed from the basement of the Salmon Tower Building.
The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. The New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) announced in January 1950 that it would lengthen the platforms at the Times Square and Fifth Avenue stations from . The platforms at Fifth Avenue and all other stations on the Flushing Line with the exception of Queensboro Plaza were extended in 1955–1956 to accommodate 11-car trains.
IND Sixth Avenue Line
New York City mayor John Francis Hylan's original plans for the Independent Subway System (IND), proposed in 1922, included building over of new lines and taking over nearly of existing lines. The lines were designed to compete with the existing underground, surface, and elevated lines operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). The IND Sixth Avenue Line was designed to replace the elevated IRT Sixth Avenue Line. In 1924, the IND submitted its list of proposed subway routes to the BOT, which approved the program. One of the routes was a segment of tunnel from Fourth Street to 53rd Street. Part of this stretch was already occupied by the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H&M)'s Uptown Hudson Tubes. As a result, negotiations between the city and the H&M continued for several years. The IND and H&M finally came to an agreement in 1930. The city had decided to build the IND Sixth Avenue Line's local tracks around the pre-existing H&M tubes, and add express tracks for the IND underneath the H&M tubes at a later date. Also in 1930, the BOT identified the locations of 104 stations to be built in the IND system. Under this plan, there would have been a local station at Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street.
The IND started advertising bids for the section of the Sixth Avenue Line between 43rd and 53rd Streets in April 1931. Engineers started planning in earnest for the Midtown portion of the Sixth Avenue Line in April 1935. The city government issued corporate stock to pay for the $53 million cost of the project, since the line was not eligible for federal Public Works Administration funds. The first contract, for the section between 40th and 47th Streets, was awarded to Rosoff-Brader Construction in October 1935. The next February, mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia announced that construction would start within six weeks. The contractors were to excavate a construction shaft at Bryant Park (completing the shaft by April 1), upon which they would proceed northward. La Guardia broke ground for the Sixth Avenue subway at Bryant Park on March 23, 1936.
The line was built as a four-track tunnel north of 33rd Street (including the Rockefeller Center station), but there were only two tracks south of that street. The work largely involved cut-and-cover excavations, although portions of the subway had to be tunneled through solid rock. The builders also had to avoid disrupting the Sixth Avenue elevated or the various utility lines on the avenue, and some of the pipes and wires had to be replaced in the process. Excavation work was conducted 24 hours a day, with most of the blasting work being conducted at night. Workers used small charges of dynamite to avoid damaging nearby buildings or the Catskill Aqueduct, which ran below Sixth Avenue and was a major part of the New York City water supply system. The contractors built a compressor plant and a shaft at 46th Street, and they excavated another shaft at Bryant Park.