Euclid Avenue station (IND Fulton Street Line)


Euclid Avenue is an express station on the IND Fulton Street Line of the New York City Subway, located at the intersection of Euclid and Pitkin Avenues in East New York, Brooklyn. It is served by the A train at all times and is the southern terminal for the C train at all times except nights. During nights, this is the northern terminal for the Lefferts Boulevard shuttle train from Ozone Park, Queens.
Construction on the Euclid Avenue station started in 1938, but this part of the Fulton Street Line did not open until 1948. The Fulton Street Line was extended to the east in 1956, connecting to the Fulton Street Elevated via a branch line that runs through the Grant Avenue station. Elevators were installed at Euclid Avenue circa 2000.
The station has four tracks and two island platforms. In terms of railroad directions, this is the southernmost station on the Fulton Street Line. The line was originally planned to extend further east as a four-track underground line; however, the four-track extension was never built. East of the station, there are connections to the Pitkin Yard as well as to the Fulton Street Elevated. The tracks themselves dead-end after the Fulton Street elevated spur diverges.

History

Euclid Avenue was part of a four-station extension of the Fulton Street subway along Pitkin Avenue, past its original planned terminus at Broadway Junction. Construction of the extension began in 1938. Work on the section of the line between Crystal Street and Grant Avenue, which included the Euclid Avenue station and the Pitkin Yard, began in late 1940. On August 26, 1941, lightning from a severe thunderstorm damaged the temporary timber roofing over the construction site at Pitkin Avenue and Autumn Avenue just east of the station. The lighting also ruptured a gas main at the site creating a fire and causing damage to an adjacent building, while two automobiles fell into the exposed tunnel cavern. Construction of the extension was halted in December 1942 due to material shortages caused by World War II. At the time, the section of tunnel between Crystal Street and Grant Avenue was 96% complete. Other parts of the extension were more than 99% complete, but vital equipment had yet to be installed, precluding these stations' openings.
Construction resumed on the extension in November 1946. The delay meant the station received different design features than the rest of the stations along the line, including a slightly different tiling, fluorescent lighting instead of then-standard incandescent lights, and improved restroom and phone booth facilities. The station also featured a then-modern interlocking technology, known as the "NX" system, wherein train operators would press buttons that automatically adjusted the corresponding switches. In older interlockings throughout the subway system, workers in a separate control tower had to manually adjust the switches using a series of levers within the tower.
After several test runs, the station opened to the public in the early morning of November 28, 1948. It became the new terminal of the Fulton Street Line, replacing the former terminal at Broadway–East New York. It later became the replacement for the elevated BMT Fulton Street Line's Chestnut Street and Crescent Street stations, which closed on April 26, 1956 when the connection to the eastern Fulton elevated was opened.
In the mid-2000s, an elevator to the street and elevators between the mezzanine and each platform were installed, making the station ADA-accessible.

Station layout

The station has four tracks and two island platforms. It is the easternmost express station on the IND Fulton Street Line in terms of geographic directions. In terms of railroad directions, Euclid Avenue is the line's southernmost express station. It has the same 10" × 5" eggshell-beige wall tile as do the next three stations west, in contrast to the typical square white tiles seen in the rest of the IND. The tile band, however, is a delicate shade of lilac with a violet border, similar to Delancey Street in Manhattan. The I-beams are tiled with color bands and mini-vertical name tablets reading "Euclid," along with the two-tone border motif. The I-beams are in pairs at the center of the platforms; towards each end the platforms narrow and there is a single row of these I-beams. A crew quarters room is over the railroad south end of both platforms. The station has a crossover in the mezzanine along with an active newsstand and elevators to both platforms.
The station has a control tower at the eastern end of the southbound platform, which monitors trains between Broadway Junction and the station, and controls the interlockings east of Euclid Avenue. The tower was the first in the subway system to use the "NX" or "Entrance-Exit" system. In this system, the tower utilizes a wide, tall electric light signal board which features a diagram of the nearby stations and track layout. It operates on direct current and consists of simple knobs and push buttons to control track switches, as opposed to the previous system which ran on alternating current and required a complicated series of levers.

Exits

Stairways are present from each platform to the mezzanine above the tracks. Fare control is located in the mezzanine. Outside fare control is a street elevator leading to the northeast corner of Pitkin and Euclid Avenues. Street stairs also lead to all four corners of the intersection. The bus routes stop outside the station.

East of the station

The next station east for IND Fulton Street service is Grant Avenue, located in City Line, Brooklyn. However, an unfinished station is rumored to exist at 76th Street in nearby Ozone Park, Queens, just four blocks east of Grant Avenue.
The track work near Euclid Avenue is intricate, allowing trains to enter the Pitkin Yard from both the express and local tracks, and with connections to the two-track Grant Avenue station from both the express and local tracks; the Grant Avenue spur then veers northeast towards Liberty Avenue. All four mainline tracks continue below the Grant Avenue connection, used only to store trains, east under Pitkin Avenue until approximately Eldert Lane. It was planned that these tracks would continue under Pitkin Avenue to Cross Bay Boulevard, as part of a never-built system expansion which would have extended the Fulton Street Subway to the Rockaways and to Cambria Heights near the Queens-Nassau County border. On the electric light signal board in the control room at Euclid Avenue, there is a taped-over section of the board that hides the 76th Street station. There are also two tracks coming from the Pitkin Yard heading towards the planned 76th Street station site. These tracks would have merged with the mainline tracks just before 76th Street station. When Pitkin Yard originally opened, the yard leads toward 76th Street were usable to relay short trains on. Today, those two tracks are no longer connected via switches. Parts of the trackways still exist, but the switches were removed and the tunnel ends in a cinderblock wall.
As late as 1951, the mainline and relay tracks were still planned to be extended as far as 105th Street, with a connection to the then-recently abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Rail Road east of Cross Bay Boulevard. The extension of the subway, however, was never built; instead the line was connected to the former Fulton Street elevated on Liberty Avenue and the former LIRR Rockaway branch, both via the Grant Avenue station, which opened in 1956.
Rumors that the proposed station was actually constructed, at least partially, are prevalent. Evidence supporting the existence of the station includes the signal board, the cinderblock wall at the end of the tunnel and several signals for trains running from the station into Euclid Avenue facing the wall, including one directly in front of the wall. On online transit forums, such as the website SubChat, some have claimed to have known people who have seen the station. The New York Times, referring to the rumor as the "transit Atlantis", has likened it to the Roswell UFO incident or the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Steve Krokowski, a retired transit worker and police officer, was quoted by the Times in reference to the station, mentioning:
However, there is also significant evidence against the existence of the station, including a lack of newspaper coverage, the lack of subway infrastructure such as ventilation grates or skylights on Pitkin Avenue in the area, and the absence of documentation of the work from the Board of Transportation or the Board of Estimate.