Fulton Street Station (Eighth Avenue Line)

Fulton Street is a New York City Subway station complex in Lower Manhattan. It consists of four linked stations on the IND Eighth Avenue Line, the IRT Lexington Avenue Line, the BMT Nassau Street Line and the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. The last three cross Fulton Street at Broadway, Nassau Street, and William Street respectively; the Eighth Avenue Line station is underneath Fulton Street, between Broadway and Nassau Streets. The station is the seventh busiest in the system, as of 2017, with 26,838,473 passengers.

The complex is served by the:

• 2, 4, A, and J trains at all times
• 3, 5, and C trains at all times except late nights
• Z train during rush hours in the peak direction

The Fulton Center is a renovation project that improves access throughout the station complex, introduces a new station building, and provides easier access to the World Trade Center site. It links the Fulton Street subway station with the nearby Chambers Street-World Trade Center/Park Place/Cortlandt Street station complex (one stop north on the A, C, 2 and 3 trains) and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub through the out-of-system Dey Street Passageway. The Fulton Center opened on November 10, 2014.

Station layout

G Street level Exits/entrances Elevators located:

• on the southwest corner of Dey Street and Broadway for southbound ​ trains only. Out-of-system accessible transfer available to ​​ trains at World Trade Center/Cortlandt Street.
• inside the Fulton Center Main Building for northbound ​ trains only.
• on the northeast corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets for ​ ​ trains.
• on the southwest corner of William and Fulton Streets for ​ ​ trains.

IRT Lexington Avenue Line platforms

Fulton Street is a station on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line with two tracks and two side platforms.

History

This station opened on January 16, 1905, as part of a one-stop extension southbound from Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall. Only the northbound platform was in use when service started at this station. The southbound platform opened for service on June 12, 1905, when the subway was extended one stop to the south at Wall Street. This marked the first time that the subway had been extended further downtown and towards Brooklyn; the previous terminus, Brooklyn Bridge, was also the original subway's southern end.

Originally, only the southbound platform was ADA-accessible. In October 2012, a new entrance on Dey Street opened for the Dey Street underpass to Cortlandt Street, and an ADA-accessible elevator was installed for the southbound platform. In November 2014, the northbound platform became accessible through an elevator to the underpass that connected to the southbound platform.

The station, which is now a registered New York City Landmark, features a mosaic of the steamboat built by Robert Fulton. The southbound platform incorporates an ornate entrance to the building at 195 Broadway, which features fluted columns, engraved metal signs, ornate railings, and blacked out store windows.

Exits

Despite being on the Lexington Avenue Line, the station actually lies underneath Broadway between Cortlandt and Fulton Streets, as the line takes ist name from ist trunk avenue in Midtown and Upper Manhattan. A number of exits to street level are available at Dey, John, and Fulton Streets, while the connecting passage to the other stations within the Fulton Street complex lies underneath the latter. Southbound exits are located at:

• Two stairs, NW corner of Fulton Street and Broadway
• One stair, 195 Broadway near SW corner of Fulton Street and Broadway
• One stair, NW corner of Dey Street and Broadway
• One stair, one elevator, and passageway, SW corner of Dey Street and Broadway
• One stair, NW corner of Cortlandt Street and Broadway

Northbound exits are located at:

• Fulton Center building, SE corner of Fulton Street and Broadway
• One stair, NE corner of Maiden Lane and Broadway

IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line platform

Fulton Street on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line was built on the portion of the line built as part of the Dual Contracts, which is the section south of Times Square–42nd Street. The line first opened as a shuttle to 34th Street–Penn Station on June 3, 1917, and then south to South Ferry on July 1, 1918. On this same date, the Fulton Street station opened, with service to the station running as a shuttle between Chambers Street and Wall Street, on the line's Brooklyn Branch. On August 1, 1918, the new "H" system was implemented on August 1, 1918, joining the two halves of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line and sending all West Side trains south from Times Square. As a result, shuttle service to this station was replaced by through service.

During the 1964–1965 fiscal year, the platforms at Fulton Street, along with those at four other stations on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, were lengthened to 525 feet to accommodate a ten-car train of 51-foot IRT cars.

Fulton Street station has a standard local configuration of two tracks and one island platform. Brooklyn-bound trains use track K2 while uptown trains use track K3. These designations come from track chaining which measures track distances and are not used in normal conversation. Based on this chaining, Fulton Street is about 19,700 ft (3.73 mi) from post zero at Broadway and 44th Street since this is where the West Side Line "merges" with the 42nd Street Shuttle. This is slightly non-standard signage because it is a local station using express track numbers as these tracks become the express tracks on the main line, providing a reasonable explanation.

There is an ADA-accessible elevator from platform level to the mezzanine at the platform's extreme south end, connecting to the mezzanine, which has elevators to the rest of the station via the IND Eighth Avenue Line platform. The Marine Grill Murals, salvaged from the restaurant of the same name in the Hotel McAlpin, reside near these elevators.

Exits

The station has two mezzanines, separated at Fulton Street. The full-time entrance is to the south mezzanine, at the southeast corner of Fulton and William Streets. There are also part-time entrances mid-block on William Street, and through an office building on John Street. The north mezzanine is open part-time, with an entrance through an office building on the northeast corner of Fulton and William Streets. Like Wall Street, the next station south, there is a narrow island platform and a number of comparatively narrow staircases up to the mezzanine level.

BMT Nassau Street Line platforms

Fulton Street on the BMT Nassau Street Line has two tracks and two side platforms, with downtown trains on the upper level and uptown trains on the lower level due to the narrowness of Nassau Street. The station has an unusual layout. The entrance for uptown trains is on the west side of Nassau Street, and the entrance for downtown trains is on the east side of Nassau Street (the reverse of what one would normally expect). It is possible to cross between the uptown and downtown sides via the IND platform, which passes underneath both levels of this station. The station is ADA-accessible via the use of elevators to the IND platform, which then leads to the ADA-accessible Fulton Center main building.

Exits

Exit stairs rise to all four corners of Nassau Street and Fulton Street, with the eastern stairs for the southbound platform and the western stairs for the northbound platform. On the south end of the southbound platform, there are exits to either eastern corner of John and Nassau Streets that are open only during rush hours.

There is a sealed north end exit to Ann Street and passageway to Beekman Street and Pace University to the far north. This passageway was out of system and more than one block long.

IND Eighth Avenue Line platform

Fulton Street (formerly Broadway–Nassau Street) on the IND Eighth Avenue Line has two tracks and one island platform. The station is located approximately sixty feet (18m) below ground level. Similar to other stations near it, Fulton Street utilizes a tube station design because of ist depth. The tile on this station is colored purple, with wall tiles reading "FULTON". An alternating pattern of "BWAY" and "NASSAU" was the original tiling. The station adopted the "Fulton Street" name in December 2010 to become unified with the other platforms in the station complex. Overhead and column signage carry the new name.

An Arts for Transit piece, Nancy Holt's Astral Grating, was formerly located on the mezzanine but was removed during renovation.

Elevators lead from this line's platform to the mezzanines for the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line platform, both of the BMT Nassau Street Line's platforms, and both of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line's platforms. There is an elevator to street level at the southwestern corner of William and Fulton Streets.

Exits

The IND platform can be accessed via the entrances to any of the three other stations, but the BMT platforms' entrances provide the most direct access.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Fulton Street station (New York City Subway)" and modified on June 2, 2020 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.