When the 4th Avenue BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit) subway line, constructed in 1915 and extended over the Manhattan Bridge a couple of years later was competed, the Manhattan-Bridge-bound route included a station at Myrtle Avenue between 1919 and 1956. The short version of what happened to it is that the DeKalb Avenue interlocking was extended in 1956, completely eliminating the Brooklyn-bound platform and forcing the closure of the entire station. It’s a bit more complicated than that, though, and Joe Brennan explains it better on his Abandoned Stations page.
Manhattan-bound passengers can easily recognize the station because it contains the newly revived art project called “Masstransiscope” first constructed by Bill Brand in 1980 on the Myrtle Avenue platform. After a few years of decay and disuse, it’s once again been restored to its old glory.
For years in the Super Seventies, while riding past on an N train, I’d go past the dimly-lit closed station, whose cylindrical platform pillars still had “Myrtle Avenue” notation on them. But here’s a puzzler. I recently came across this photo, and as you can see, the identification tablets read “Gold Street” instead of “Myrtle Avenue.” Neither Brennan nor any other chronicler mention this anomaly, and so the floor is open in Comments about why the Myrtle Avenue station had such signage.
1/17/15
Addendum: apparently this is a very early photo because the station was called “Gold Street” for its first year or so, and was then renamed Myrtle Avenue.
Also see this excerpt from the 1915 brochure for the Sea Beach Line (today’s N train) courtesy Joe Korman.
