The Lenox Terminal/148th Street Station is among Manhattan’s most unusual subway stations. It’s a true terminal, as it’s the northern end of the #3 line.
–It’s the only Manhattan station that sees daylight, except for a few stations on the #1 that are close to the surface and have sunlight seeping through grates; or on elevated stations such as 125th or all stations north of 191st
–It’s the only Manhattan subway station that is completely at grade, or the same height as the street (a portion of Dyckman Street station that exits a tunnel also is)
–It does not end at Lenox Avenue (Malcolm X Boulevard); it ends at Powell Boulevard and 149th Street at the Esplanade Gardens Houses. The terminal is so named because the #3 runs beneath Lenox Avenue from 110th Street north to 145th, where it begins a climb to the surface and takes a turn to the west.
–It is tied for one of the newest Manhattan stations with the Grand Street IND station (1967) and 57th Street/6th Avenue (1968). The Hudson Yards station serving the #7, however, opened in 2015 and three stations serving the new Second Avenue line are still scheduled to open in December 2016.
The trackage has been in place since the earliest days of the subway in 1904 as terminal yards, but in 1957 a proposal was put forth by area residents to build a station at the west end of the yards to accommodate a “transit hole” in the area as the 145th Street station serving the IND was too far west.
The south end of the #3 line is New Lots Avenue in East New York, but there is an elevated connection to trainyards that run over Linden Boulevard and Cleveland Street, which would be a couple of blocks from the shopping malls at Spring Creek. Any passenger service extensions there are probably a few years away, at least.
11/26/16
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When I was in high school in the early 80s my mother had an appointment in that area of Harlem and told me that as she was waiting for an outbound train to arrive and that it was snowing in the station and I asked how could it be snowing in a subway station? I knew at that time that except for the stations on the Broadway line at 125 st., Dyckman st., 207 st., 215st. and 225st. there were no elevated stations in Manhattan. My mother and then later my older brother who was a transit buff and who had also been to that station would describe it to me as being “semi-enclosed” but I had to go there and see it for myself years later. If you want to stump a transit trivia buff ask them to name the only subway train that you can see Yankee stadium from while in Manhattan? The answer being the 3 train facing east prior to entering and leaving Lenox Terminal the train I believe is underneath or next to the FDR drive and there are a few seconds that you can catch a glimpse of the stadium across the east river.