Dupont Circle station


Dupont Circle is a station on the Red Line of the Washington Metro in Washington, D.C. Located below the circle of the same name, it is one of the busiest stations in the Metro system, with an average of 16,948 entries each weekday.

Location

The station parallels Connecticut Avenue NW between the southern edge of the circle to the south and Q Street NW to the north. The station's southernmost point is slightly more than two-and-a-half blocks north of Farragut North, making the two closer than any other station pairs save Metro Center and Gallery Place.

Notable places nearby

Dupont Circle station opened on January 17, 1977, the first to open after the original stretch of the Red Line between Union Station and Farragut North.. It remained the western terminus of the Red Line until December 5, 1981, upon the extension of the line to Van Ness–UDC. The south entrance was closed from February 1 to October 21, 2012, to replace all three escalators, deemed among the system's least reliable.
On January 15, 2018, a train headed to Glenmont derailed outside the station. Nobody was seriously hurt.

Station layout

Dupont Circle station has two tracks with side platforms, one of the only Red Line stations with this setup. This single-bore layout is required by its deep passage beneath the Connecticut Avenue NW underpass and an abandoned streetcar tunnel. There are two entrances to the station. The north entrance, on the southeast corner of Q Street NW and 20th Street NW contains a set of three escalators and an elevator to reach a mezzanine and fare control at the north end of the station. The south entrance, located on the southern edge of Dupont Circle at 19th Street NW and Connecticut Avenue NW, has another set of three escalators to reach a separate mezzanine and fare control at the south end of the platforms. The station's north entrance escalators are long.

Walt Whitman poem

In 2007, a portion of Walt Whitman's 1865 poem The Wound Dresser was inscribed into the granite wall around the north entrance escalators to honor the city's caregivers during the HIV crisis. It reads:

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night – some are so young;
Some suffer so much – I recall the experience sweet and sad…