The Astor Place station (signed as Astor Place–Cooper Union) is a local station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at Fourth Avenue, Cooper Square, and Astor Place between the East Village and NoHo, it is served by trains at all times, <6> trains during weekdays in the peak direction, and trains during late night hours.
The Astor Place station was constructed for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) as part of the city's first subway line, which was approved in 1900. Construction of the line segment that includes the Astor Place station started on September 12 of the same year. The station opened on October 27, 1904, as one of the original 28 stations of the New York City Subway. The station's platforms were lengthened in the late 1950s, and the station was renovated in the mid-1980s.
The Astor Place station contains two side platforms and four tracks; express trains use the inner two tracks to bypass the station. The station was built with tile and mosaic decorations. The platforms contain exits to Astor Place and are not connected to each other within fare control. The original station interior is a New York City designated landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
History Construction and opening 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 passed the Rapid Transit Act. The subway plans were drawn up by a team of engineers led by William Barclay Parsons, the Rapid Transit Commission's chief engineer. It called for a subway line from New York City Hall in lower Manhattan to the Upper West Side, where two branches would lead north into the Bronx. A plan was formally adopted in 1897, and all legal conflicts over the route alignment were resolved near the end of 1899. 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. In 1901, the firm of Heins & LaFarge was hired to design the underground stations. Belmont incorporated the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in April 1902 to operate the subway.
The Astor Place station was constructed as part of the route segment from Great Jones Street to 41st Street. Construction on this section of the line began on September 12, 1900. The section from Great Jones Street to a point 100 feet (30 m) north of 33rd Street was awarded to Holbrook, Cabot & Daly Contracting Company. In the vicinity of the Astor Place station, the subway was to run under Lafayette Street, a new thoroughfare constructed between 1897 and 1905. This involved widening, connecting, and renaming two formerly unconnected streets: Elm Street, which ran south of Houston Street, and Lafayette Place, which ran north of Great Jones Street to an intersection with Astor Place. The southward extension of Lafayette Street and the construction of the subway required the demolition or underpinning of several buildings in the street's path. This resulted in the creation of narrow land lots on either side of Lafayette Street between Houston and Great Jones Streets, slightly south of the Astor Place station's site. By late 1903, the subway was nearly complete, but the IRT Powerhouse and the system's electrical substations were still under construction, delaying the system's opening. As late as October 26, 1904, the day before the subway was scheduled to open, the wall on the southbound platform next to the Wanamaker's store was incomplete.
The Astor Place station opened on October 27, 1904, as one of the original 28 stations of the New York City Subway from City Hall to 145th Street on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. The opening of the first subway line, and particularly the Astor Place station, helped contribute to more development in the East Village; while the neighborhood was already densely populated at the time, the new subway provided connections to other parts of the city. After the first subway line was completed in 1908, the station was served by local trains along both the West Side (now the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line to Van Cortlandt Park–242nd Street) and East Side (now the Lenox Avenue Line). West Side local trains had their southern terminus at City Hall during rush hours and South Ferry at other times, and had their northern terminus at 242nd Street. East Side local trains ran from City Hall to Lenox Avenue (145th Street).
Service changes and station renovations
1900s to 1930s
Plans for the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (H&M; now PATH), devised in the first decade of the 20th century, included a spur from the Uptown Hudson Tubes along Ninth Street to the Astor Place station. At the time, the Uptown Tubes between New Jersey and Manhattan had been under construction intermittently since 1874. By 1904, William Gibbs McAdoo was given the rights to complete the Uptown Tubes. As part of the plan, he would retain perpetual rights to build and operate an east–west crosstown line under Christopher Street and Ninth Street eastward to either Second Avenue or Astor Place, with no intermediate stops. Although the Uptown Tubes opened to 33rd Street in 1908, work on the Ninth Street spur stalled. By 1914, the Rapid Transit Commissioners had determined that the spur was unlikely to be built soon, so permission to build the Ninth Street tunnel was denied.
To address overcrowding, in 1909, the New York Public Service Commission proposed lengthening the platforms at stations along the original IRT subway. As part of a modification to the IRT's construction contracts made on January 18, 1910, the company was to lengthen station platforms to accommodate ten-car express and six-car local trains. In addition to $1.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ) spent on platform lengthening, $500,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) was spent on building additional entrances and exits. It was anticipated that these improvements would increase capacity by 25 percent. The northbound platform at the Astor Place station was extended in either direction, while the southbound platform was not lengthened. Six-car local trains began operating in October 1910. The Lexington Avenue Line opened north of Grand Central–42nd Street in 1918, and the original line was divided into an H-shaped system. All local trains were sent via the Lexington Avenue Line, running along the Pelham Line in the Bronx.
In December 1922, the Transit Commission approved a $3 million project to lengthen platforms at 14 local stations along the original IRT line, including Astor Place and seven other stations on the Lexington Avenue Line. Platform lengths at these stations would be increased from . The commission postponed the platform-lengthening project in September 1923, at which point the cost had risen to $5.6 million.
1940s to 1960s The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. After the closure of the Wanamaker's department store in 1954, the northern building of the two-building complex was sold off and demolished. In July 1956, a fire gutted the building while it was being destroyed. When the fire was being extinguished, some water pooled in the basement and into a subterranean river parallel to the tracks, a likely tributary of Minetta Creek. In the aftermath, the Astor Place station was flooded, causing service to be rerouted for one week. The flood undermined the existing track bed, which was composed of a foot of concrete above a layer of earth. As a result, of new concrete track beds had to be installed. The repairs cost roughly $250,000.
In November 1959, the Warshaw Construction Company received a contract to remove fifteen entrance/exit kiosks on IRT lines, including two at the Astor Place station. This was part of a citywide initiative to remove the kiosks, which obstructed motorists' views of pedestrians. Also in late 1959, contracts were awarded to extend the platforms at , , , , , , Astor Place, , , and to . In April 1960, work began on a $3,509,000 project (equivalent to $ million in ) to lengthen platforms at seven of these stations to accommodate ten-car trains. The northbound platforms at Canal Street, Spring Street, Bleecker Street, and Astor Place were lengthened from ; the platform extensions at these stations opened on February 19, 1962.
1970s to present In 1979, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the space within the boundaries of the original station, excluding expansions made after 1904, as a city landmark. The station was designated along with eleven others on the original IRT. The original interiors were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) listed the station among the 69 most deteriorated stations in the subway system in 1981. This led residents to create the Committee for Astor Place to raise money for restoration of the station. In 1981, the MTA announced the creation of its Culture Stations program to install public art in the subway. The Culture Stations program was started to deter graffiti, and was inspired by legislation in the New York City Council that mandated that 1% of the cost of constructing public buildings be used for art. The program was modeled on the Louvre – Rivoli station on the Paris Métro, which featured reproductions of the artwork on display in the Louvre. Four stations, namely Astor Place, Eastern Parkway–Brooklyn Museum, 66th Street–Lincoln Center, and Fifth Avenue/53rd Street, were selected for the program due to their proximity to cultural institutions. These would be among the first stations in the MTA's new station refurbishment program, which began in 1982. Initially, there was funding only for the Astor Place and Fifth Avenue/53rd Street stations.
By 1982, the Astor Place station was planned to be renovated for $2.25 million. As part of the Adopt-a-Station program, which sought to renovate some of the subway's most deteriorated stations, the Chemical Bank sponsored a $2.5 million renovation for the station (equivalent to $ million in ), while the Committee for Astor Place cosponsored the project. Other sources of funding included $600,000 from the Federal Urban Mass Transit Administration, as well as $125,000 from private sources such as the Vincent Astor Foundation. The firm of Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen was hired to renovate the platforms. Rolf Ohlhausen, one of the firm's principals, had photographed the station's original cast-iron station entrance kiosks as an architecture student at the neighboring Cooper Union, and he advocated for a replica kiosk to be installed over the northbound entrance.