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