The Grand Central–42nd Street station (also signed as 42nd Street–Grand Central) is a major station complex of the New York City Subway. Located in Midtown Manhattan at 42nd Street between Madison and Lexington Avenues, it serves trains on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, the IRT Flushing Line and the 42nd Street Shuttle. The complex is served by the , , and trains at all times; the and 42nd Street Shuttle (S) trains at all times except late nights; the <6> train during weekdays in the peak direction; and the <7> train during rush hours and early evenings in the peak direction.
The station is adjacent to Grand Central Terminal and Grand Central Madison, which serves all Metro-North Railroad lines east of the Hudson River and Long Island Rail Road lines east bound for another major hub Jamaica and several points east. There are multiple exits to Grand Central Terminal and to nearby buildings such as One Vanderbilt and the Chrysler Building. Numerous elevators make the station compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
The present shuttle station was constructed for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) as an express station on the city's first subway line, which was approved in 1900. The station opened on October 27, 1904, as one of the original 28 stations of the New York City Subway. As part of the Dual Contracts, the Flushing Line platform opened in 1915. After the Lexington Avenue Line platforms opened in 1918, the original station became the eastern terminal of the 42nd Street Shuttle, reconfigured with three tracks and two platforms. The Grand Central–42nd Street station complex has been reconstructed numerous times over the years, including in the early 21st century, when the shuttle station was reconfigured.
Grand Central–42nd Street is the second busiest station in the -station system, with 45,745,700 passengers in 2019; only the Times Square–42nd Street and 42nd Street–Port Authority Bus Terminal station complex has more riders.
History First subway 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, which called for the subway to run under several streets in lower Manhattan before running under Fourth Avenue, 42nd Street, and Broadway. A previous proposal had called for the entire length of the subway to use Broadway, but the "awkward alignment...along Forty-Second Street", as the commission put it, was necessitated by objections to using the southernmost section of Broadway. All lawsuits concerning 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 present shuttle station at Grand Central–42nd Street was constructed as part of the route segment underneath 42nd Street and Times Square, which extended from Park Avenue and 41st Street to Broadway and 47th Street. Construction on this section of the line began on February 25, 1901. Work for that section had been awarded to Degnon-McLean. 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. The Grand Central–42nd Street 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 Grand Central shuttle platforms predate the terminal itself, as the construction of Grand Central Terminal was completed in 1913. Alt URL
After the first subway line was completed in 1908, the station was served by local and express 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). Express trains had their southern terminus at South Ferry or Atlantic Avenue and had their northern terminus at 242nd Street, Lenox Avenue (145th Street), or West Farms (180th Street).
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 () was spent on building additional entrances and exits. It was anticipated that these improvements would increase capacity by 25 percent. At the Grand Central station, the northbound platform was extended west, while the southbound platform was extended west. Small portions of the walls and roof were also reconstructed, and a new signal tower was constructed at the west end of the station. Six-car local trains began operating in October 1910. On January 23, 1911, ten-car express trains began running on the Lenox Avenue Line, and the next day, ten-car express trains were inaugurated on the West Side Line.
Early expansion On May 17, 1910, the New York State Public Service Commission received a letter from the New York Central Railroad announcing plans to create a concourse to connect the under-construction Grand Central Terminal with new subway lines planned at 42nd Street. The plan called for the construction of a passageway under 42nd Street from the Vanderbilt Avenue end of the existing subway station to an elevator shaft at Lexington Avenue, connecting the planned Steinway Tunnel and Broadway–Lexington Avenue subway lines with street level. An elevator shaft would have connected the Steinway Tunnel, a platform with the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H&M, now PATH), and the new concourse, and would have led out to street level adjacent to a stairway leading to an extension of the IRT Third Avenue Line. As part of this proposal, the new station on the Broadway–Lexington Avenue Line would have been located at 42nd Street instead of 43rd Street to provide an adequate connection with Grand Central Terminal. The New York Central also recommended revising the planned location of the station on the Steinway tunnel line.
The original plan for what became the Lexington Avenue Line north of 42nd Street was to continue it south through Irving Place and into what is now the BMT Broadway Line at Ninth Street and Broadway. Contracts awarded on July 21, 1911, included Section 6 between 26th Street and 40th Street; at the time, the IRT had withdrawn from the talks, and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) was to operate on Lexington Avenue. The IRT submitted an offer for what became its portion of the Dual Contracts on February 27, 1912. Soon after the IRT submitted its offer for the Dual Contracts, construction was halted on Section 6. The contracts were formalized in early 1913, specifying new lines or expansions to be built by the IRT and the BRT.
Steinway Tunnel
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 tunnel, with trolley loops on both the Manhattan and Queens sides, had sat unused since 1907, when test runs had been performed in the then-nearly-complete tunnel. The Manhattan trolley loop was near the Grand Central station.
The Flushing Line platform was the first Dual Contracts improvement to be completed at Grand Central, opening on June 22, 1915. On August 31, 1916, a passageway connecting the Flushing Line platform with the rest of the subway station was opened with an inspection tour; it was opened to the public in the following days. The new passageway connected the station's eastern mezzanine with the Flushing Line platform via ramp and a pair of elevators. This was part of a ramp that the Public Service Commission had hoped to use to connect the Steinway Tunnel to the 42nd Street Line.
"H" system Also as part of the Dual Contracts, the construction of the Lexington Avenue Line, in conjunction with the construction of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, would change the operations of the IRT system. Instead of having trains go via Park Avenue, turning onto 42nd Street, before finally turning onto Broadway, there would be two trunk lines connected by the 42nd Street Shuttle. The system would be changed from looking like a "Z" system to an H-shaped system. One trunk would run via the new Lexington Avenue Line down Park Avenue, and the other trunk would run via the new Seventh Avenue Line up Broadway. It was predicted that the subway extension would lead to the growth of the Upper East Side and the Bronx. To reduce the transfer between the eastern end of the original line's station and the new Lexington Avenue Line station, a new shuttle station was to be built to the east. The construction of the narrow island platform station required building two new trackways extending east under 42nd Street. Although the platform was constructed, it was never used.
The Lexington Avenue Line was to run diagonally under the former Children's Hospital on the north side of 42nd Street east of Park Avenue. The route would connect the original subway under Park Avenue, on the west, to the new line under Lexington Avenue, on the east, at a point between 43rd and 44th Streets. This alignment also ran under the Grand Union Hotel at the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Park Avenue. The Public Service Commission had to acquire an easement from the New York Central Railroad, the owner of the Children's Hospital site, but the commission was unwilling to pay New York Central's asking price for the easement. Consequently, in April 1913, the plan was modified so that the line made an S-curve under 40th Street. The Public Service Commission voted on the modification in June 1913, and the modified route under 40th Street was adopted that November. The commission voted in favor of the original diagonal route in February 1914, at which point the Grand Union Hotel was condemned via eminent domain. The condemnation proceedings for the hotel cost $3.5 million (). The commission also acquired an easement from New York Central in February 1915 for $902,500 (). To pay for the station's construction cost, the Public Service Commission approved the construction of a 25-story building on the Grand Union Hotel site. The structure was not erected as proposed; it would later become the Pershing Square Building, which opened in 1923.