After a walk from Flushing straight through Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and into Corona, which I’ll discuss on a separate FNY page, it was time to get the #7 back to Main Street, and I found myself once again at the 103rd Street-Corona Plaza station. Most area residents don’t suspect that this was once the end of the line!
The street scene here is unusual, as Corona Plaza was once an angled section of Roosevelt Avenue between National Street and 104th. Traffic was closed here several years ago and it’s now a pedestrian plaza with stalls and stands full of tasty comestibles.
The IRT Flushing Line opened in stages between 1915 and 1928. The stations between Grand Central and Vernon-Jackson opened in 1915. Meanwhile, in Queens, the Hunters Point and Court House Square stations opened in November 1916, and the elevated stations out to 103rd/Corona Plaza in April 1917. There were 3 further extensions: to 111th Street in October 1925; Willets Point Boulevard (modern signage erroneously leaves off the “Boulevard”, as the actual Willets Point is at Fort Totten) in May 1927; and finally, an underground station on Main Street on January 2, 1928. The line was extended west two stops to Times Square by 1927. The Flushing Line expanded yet again, to the West Side Javits Convention Center, in September 2015.
Thus, here I am at what was once the end of the Flushing Line between 1917 and 1925, at what was once called Corona Plaza/Alburtis Avenue. A couple of years ago this bit of Roosevelt Avenue between National and 104th Streets was closed to vehicular traffic and became a true pedestrian plaza.
The “Walgreens” marquee seen used to belong to the Plaza Theatre, which opened in November 1927, surviving all the way to 2005 playing Hollywood fare with Spanish subtitles. It has been a drugstore since then.
The station platform itself has some antique fixtures. If you look at this photo from 1975, you can make out the incandescent lamp fixtures. In the 1980s these were simply left in place with sodium vapor lamps affixed to the apices. As you can see these are now getting the worse for wear, with dirty glass and a dayburning lamp. It’s a good bet that the platform will receive a set of LED lamps sooner or later.
To me, it’s quite surprising that a windscreen wasn’t installed here. Instead we have the original railings and even the original station ID tablet frames. They formerly held an enamel sign in dark blue with white letters (see link above) but a modern black and white metal sign was simply placed on top of them.
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5/25/21
10 comments
Pre pandemic details on renovation.
https://sunnysidepost.com/mta-to-overhaul-six-stations-on-the-7-line-currently-in-design-phase
As you correctly noted, the IRT Flushing Line opened as far as 103rd Street in 1917. The Flushing and Astoria lines were unique because three separate rapid transit services operated on each route between 1923 and 1942. IRT subway trains using the Steinway (42nd Street) tunnel were the first service, in 1917. Beginning in 1917, IRT Second Avenue Elevated Trains (which crossed the Queensboro Bridge) also operated on both lines. In 1923, the BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit) joined the party when its shuttle trains began operating between Astoria or Corona and Queensboro Plaza, where transfer was made to BMT subway trains originating there to/from the 60th Street Tunnel. This so-called “joint IRT-BMT operation” was part of the Dual Contracts agreement between NYC and the two subway companies to provide a whole host of new transit services between Manhattan and The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Below is a link to a 1931 BMT map that shows the line fully extended to Main Street, Flushing. Interestingly, the station is called Alburtis Ave.-104th St, not 103rd St.
https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?/img/maps/bmt_1931.jpg
In 1940 NYC Board of Transportation purchased the BMT and IRT and integrated them into the IND and the overall transit system management. Second Avenue El trains stopped running in 1942, but the joint BMT-IRT operation on the two lines continued until 1949, when the current pattern (BMT via 60th Street to/from Astoria; IRT via 42nd St. to/from Flushing) was established. Below is a link to a 1948 NYC Board of Transportation map of the entire subway system that shows the Flushing and Astoria Lines as joint BMT-IRT services. The station was still known as 104th Street.
https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?/img/maps/system_1948.gif
It’s not exactly clear when the station name became 103rd Street. The historical maps from http://www.nycsubway.org show that in 1951 104th Street was still used; in 1959 the station was called 103rd Street. But no need to split hairs over a single block of Queens.
I wish I could have seen QVEENSBORO PLAZA in its heyday, when it was twice as large and had the two IRT lines and the BMT line running through it. It
must have really been something to see.
The Corona Plaza/National Street area was referred
to as “The Village” back when. This appellation distinguished
it from “The Heights” ( Lemon Ice King’s domain), and
the farmlands dotting the low-lying parts of town. My family’s
home on Christie Avenue stood adjacent to a swamp, and we
relocated to National Street/43rd Avenue, living at the same
“ancient” row of units depicted in “then-and-now” photos from
one of your first Corona postings. It was great to walk past my
old address during the memorable Forgotten Tour #68
(doubtless numbered in homage to Corona’s zipcode!?).
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and erudition. FNY is
a National Treasure ( see what I just did there?) to Coronans!
CHEERS!
My family & other familiars (from “the Heights”) always called this area “The Station.”
From about 1880 to 1904, George Lang, my 3rd great-grandmother’s second husband, operated a grocery at what is now Corona Plaza. He is called a “prominent citizen” in the Images of America: Corona book. The Lang name appears in maps from the period.
A sign showing 104th St was still in place at the south end of the Manhattan bound platform. I took a photo for nycsubway.org:
https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?85062
The sign remained in place for a couple more years when I convinced the Transit Museum to “rescue” it for the Museum ‘s archives. By that time there was more graffiti than in the 1996 photo
I agree. I found a picture on Wikipedia dating from 1913. Even the track alignments were amazing. I always heard of the tail/relay tracks used by BRT/BMT subway cars but aside from the small remnant on the structure I could only imagine it. The picture has it (on the lower left)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensboro_Plaza_station
The NYC Municipal Archives has two street photos from 1928 of the Alburtis Av station:
https://nycma.lunaimaging.com/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size2/RECORDSPHOTOUNITARC-32-NA/1145/bpq_00723-a.jpg
https://nycma.lunaimaging.com/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size2/RECORDSPHOTOUNITARC-32-NA/1145/bpq_00723-b.jpg
For those nostalgic types looking to rekindle memories here are a few stores visible from the 103rd St station: a bakery called Krugs, a shop called King Penny ( he sold everything), Fishers bakery next to the Plaza Theater ( great rye bread and crumb cake), The Darling Shop (women’s clothes) Jackson’s (toy store), butcher shops Merkels and Salerno’s. Ochiogrosso pastry shop (best Italian ice and cookies) and the Milan bar. These are just a few. Frequented all but the latter from 1956 to 1965.