Crescent Street Subway Station (Jamaica Line)

Crescent Street is a station on the BMT Jamaica Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of Crescent and Fulton Streets in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, it is served by the J train at all times and the Z during rush hours in the peak direction.

History

This station was opened on May 30, 1893 as part of the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad's four stop extension of the Lexington Avenue Line to Cypress Hills.

This station was renovated in 2007. As part of the station renovation project, the stairs were rehabilitated, the floors were renewed, major structural repairs were made, new canopies were installed, the area around the station booth was reconfigured, the platform edge strips were replaced, walls were replaced, and a high-quality public address system was installed. The renovation cost $8.43 million.

Station layout

This elevated station has two tracks and one narrow island platform. An arched canopy covers the eastern half (railroad north) of the platform.

An artwork called Wheel of Bloom – Soak Up the Sun by Jung Hyang Kim was installed in this station during a 2007 renovation. It consists of stained glass panels on the platform's sign structures showing subway train wheels lit by sunlight.

Between here and Norwood Avenue, there are the remains of a turn off for the former Chestnut Street Incline, which led to the parallel Long Island Rail Road line on Atlantic Avenue. This connection was used primarily for joint service between Williamsburg, Brooklyn and later Lower Manhattan and the beach resorts in Rockaway, Queens. A service was also operated to Jamaica, Queens for a time. The joint operation agreement and all through service via the connector was ended after the 1917 summer season. Unused by passenger service since, the ramp was taken down in 1942 for World War II scrap. A tower continued to stand west of the station to control trains using the incline. The tower was taken down sometime after 1970.

A sharp S Curve moves the line from Fulton Street to Jamaica Avenue immediately north of the station. The first turn ranks as the sharpest curve in the B Division, and second sharpest in the entire New York City Subway, second only to the City hall loop on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line. From the late-1950s into the 1960s the New York City Transit Authority had a proposal to realign the BMT Jamaica Line between the station and the vicinity of 80th Street and Grant Street west of 85th Street station. This would have also included the third express tracks. The realignment was never carried out.

Exits

The station's small, single station house is on the extreme eastern end of the platform. It has a turnstile bank, token booth, and a single staircase going to an overpass below the tracks that splits into two staircases going down to either side of Fulton Street between Crescent and Pine Streets.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Crescent Street station (BMT Jamaica Line)" and modified on June 2, 2020 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.