I haven’t written about the Hunters Point Avenue station for about a decade, but it’s one of my favorites because it’s one of a select few stations in the NYC subway in that it’s an underground station that’s positioned just before its line jumps into the light as it comes above ground. In fact I haven’t enumerated all the stations in the system that do this and I’m aware of one other, Carroll Street on the F/G. Dyckman Street on the #1 does the opposite, it’s outdoors just out of one of the deepest tunnels in the system.
When the Flushing Line opened in 1915, it connected just two stations: grand Central and Vernon-Jackson. A year later, it was extended here to Hunters Point Avenue and an elevated station at Court Square, and in 1917, from Queensboro Plaza all the way to 103rd Street. Further extensions east to Main Street by 1929 and west to Times Square by 1927 and Hudson Yards in 2015 followed.
Subway station designer Squire Vickers did a masterful job with tilework, mosaics and terra cotta in the 1910s. When the station was built, 49th Avenue, beneath which the station is located, was still called Hunters Point Avenue; today the name exists only east of Dutch Kills.
I never noticed it before but the HP’s on the station tiled pillars are two large pieces of pottery. As a rule, on tiled pillars, either affixed metal signs or mosaics signs (on the Canarsie Line) are employed.
Since I am a transit buff I keep looking for places that have potential as subway-railroad transfers. At one time, Hunters Point may have been one of these since the #7v Hunters Point Avenue station and the LIRR Hunters Point station are so close together. But this is located in something of a no man’s land and the LIRR station is little used in the mornings and evenings.
Many years ago when I was in Flushing, there was a breakdown of some kind on the #7 and passengers were then placed on the LIRR Port Washington Branch at Flushing Main Street, which made its way to the Hunters Point station, and passengers then had a free transfer to the #7 here; apparently the problem was west of Woodside, which would have been a more logical transfer. Normally the Port Washington takes the tunnel into Manhattan and avoids Hunters Point completely.
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7/26/2022