IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line Construction and opening Planning for a
subway line in
New York City dates to 1864, The subway plans were drawn up by a team of engineers led by
William Barclay Parsons, the Rapid Transit Commission's chief engineer. It called for a subway line from
New York City Hall in
lower Manhattan to the
Upper West Side, where two branches would lead north into
the Bronx. A plan was formally adopted in 1897, under which it would construct the subway and maintain a 50-year operating lease from the opening of the line. At the 168th Street station, the only means of access was via two elevators and a staircase, The original New York City Subway line from
City Hall to
145th Street on the West Side Branch opened in October 1904, with the line being extended to
157th Street a week later. Workers wanted to expedite the line's opening to serve baseball fans traveling to
American League Park, the home of the Highlanders (now
New York Yankees), The damage caused by the crash delayed the station's completion by several months. The West Side Branch was extended northward from 157th Street to a temporary terminus at
221st Street, near the
Harlem River Ship Canal, on March 12, 1906, with the station at 168th Street not yet open. This extension was initially served by shuttle trains operating between 157th Street and 221st Street. The station originally only had two elevators, each measuring , as well as a set of 119 steps; this contributed to serious overcrowding on the station's first day of operation. The opening of the first subway line helped contribute to the development of
Washington Heights,
1900s and 1910s When the 168th Street station opened, the two elevators could fit only 50 passengers each, and they became severely overcrowded during peak times. During baseball games at American League Park, many fans opted to instead take the subway to 157th Street, then pay an additional 25 cents for a taxi to the stadium. The elevators' capacity limitations prompted the Public Service Commission to decide against constructing additional deep-level subway lines; newer routes, such as the
Broadway and
Lexington Avenue lines, were instead built using the
cut-and-cover method. In Fiscal Year 1909, work was done to increase the carrying load of the elevators at the station. Officials had decided against adding additional elevators because it would only cost $6,300 to update the existing elevator cabs. By the early 1910s, the elevators could carry 80 people at once and were staffed by elevator operators. To address overcrowding, in 1909, the
New York Public Service Commission proposed lengthening the platforms at stations along the original IRT subway. As part of a modification to the IRT's construction contracts made on January 18, 1910, the company was to lengthen station platforms to accommodate ten-car express and six-car local trains. In addition to $1.5 million (equivalent to $ million in ) spent on platform lengthening, $500,000 (equivalent to $ million in ) was spent on building additional entrances and exits. It was anticipated that these improvements would increase capacity by 25 percent. The northbound platform at the 168th Street station was extended to the south. The arched ceiling adjacent to the platform extension was replaced with a flat roof made of steel beams, since the arch's structural integrity was compromised by the platform extension. Subsequently, the station could accommodate six-car local trains, but ten-car trains could not open some of their doors. The city government authorized the construction of additional elevators at the station in February 1922; there were to be four new shafts on the west side of Broadway, and elevator cabs were to be installed in two of the shafts. The city began receiving bids for the elevator shafts in April 1922, and they also awarded a contract for a new station entrance to Holbrook, Cabot & Rollins Corporation for $283,000 the next month. The city received bids for the elevator cabs that December and awarded the contract to the
Otis Elevator Company. In Fiscal Year 1923, work began on the installation of a new entrance with elevators on the west side of Broadway to increase the capacity of the station. The following fiscal year, the IRT reported that work to construct new entrances to the station was 87 percent complete. The two elevators entered service on June 26, 1924. The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. Platforms at IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line stations between and , including those at 168th Street, were lengthened to between 1946 and 1948, allowing full ten-car express trains to stop at these stations. with an estimated cost of $3.891 million. The platform extensions at these stations were opened in stages. On April 6, 1948, the platform extension opened for stations from
103rd Street to
Dyckman Street, including this station but excluding
125th Street.
IND Eighth Avenue Line Plans for a second subway line with a station at 168th Street and Broadway date as far back as 1914. That year, engineer
Reginald Pelham Bolton proposed a short extension of the elevated
IRT Ninth Avenue Line to
Riverside Drive, with an intermediate station at 168th Street and Broadway to relieve congestion at the IRT subway stop there. The Transit Commission proposed another subway line to Broadway and 168th Street, an unbuilt extension of the
Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation's
Broadway Line, in 1922. New York City mayor
John Francis Hylan's original plans for the
Independent Subway System (IND), proposed in 1922, included building over of new lines and taking over nearly of existing lines. The lines were designed to compete with the existing underground, surface, and elevated lines operated by the IRT and
Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). On December 9, 1924, the
New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) gave preliminary approval to the construction of a subway line along Eighth Avenue, running from 207th Street. The BOT announced a list of stations on the new line in February 1928, with an express station at 167th Street; this station would be the northern terminus of local service. Most of the Eighth Avenue Line was dug using a cheap
cut-and-cover method. In September 1928, the Woodcrest Construction Company received a $375,014 contract to construct the
155th Street,
163rd Street, and 168th Street stations on the new line. A preview event for the new subway was hosted on September 8, 1932, two days before the official opening. The Eighth Avenue Line station opened on September 10, 1932, as part of the city-operated IND's initial segment, the Eighth Avenue Line between
Chambers Street and
207th Street. There was a direct connection with the IRT station at 168th Street; initially, passengers had to pay an additional fare to transfer between the IRT and the IND. Construction of the whole line cost $191.2 million (equivalent to $ million in ). While the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line already provided service to Washington Heights, the new Eighth Avenue subway via St. Nicholas Avenue provided an alternative route. In particular, the IND's 168th Street station provided easy access to the
Columbia University Irving Medical Center, as trains from 168th Street could reach
Lower Manhattan within a half hour.
Consolidation into single complex When the IND station opened, it was connected to the IRT station at the same intersection via a passageway. This corridor originally required payment of an additional fare, but it was placed inside fare control on July 1, 1948.
1950s to 1970s On December 28, 1950, the
New York City Board of Transportation issued a report concerning the construction of bomb shelters in the subway system. Five deep stations in Washington Heights, including the IRT's 168th Street station, were considered to be ideal for being used as bomb-proof shelters. The program was expected to cost $104 million (equivalent to $ billion in ). These shelters were expected to provide limited protection against conventional bombs, while providing protection against shock waves and air blast, as well as from the heat and radiation from an atomic bomb. To become suitable as shelters, the stations would require water-supply facilities, first-aid rooms, and additional bathrooms. However, the program, which required federal funding, was never completed. To increase passenger flow, officials replaced the IND station's pocket-change booths with high turnstiles in 1957, which prompted many complaints from passengers. In Fiscal Year 1958, two elevators at the IRT station were replaced with automatic ones, which began operating in January 1958. Fluorescent lighting at the IRT station was installed during Fiscal Year 1961. The 168th Street station was a major transfer hub for interstate buses to
New Jersey until the 1960s, when the nearby
George Washington Bridge Bus Station opened; the last interstate bus stop was relocated in 1967. By 1970, the 168th Street station on the Eighth Avenue Line was among the subway system's 12 worst
bottlenecks for passenger flow. The
New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) was considering renovating the 168th Street station by 1975. The station's token booth was closed at some point during the 1970s but reopened in 1979.
1980s and 1990s The Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line station was renovated in the late 1980s. By 1988, the project had been delayed by 20 months due to changes in the project's scope; the overpass and platform walls had yet to be restored. The renovation was completed in 1990 at a cost of $2.5 million. The project included relocating pipes and ducts, retiling the lower portions of the walls, and removing dirt from the vaulted ceiling. The NYCTA's director of architecture had wanted to clean the ceiling, but this would have required the installation of scaffolding, and the NYCTA could only use a chemical solution that was less potent than most chemical-cleaning solutions. the city's largest homeless shelter was nearby. The MTA closed one of the station's entrances in March 1991 due to concerns about crime. Although the closed entrance had recorded over 50 felonies per year, The MTA installed a ventilation shaft for the IRT station in 1993 to alleviate overheating. During the early 1990s, the MTA also removed three of the station's high entry-exit turnstiles to increase passenger flow. The IRT station's elevators gained a reputation for unreliability.
Newsday, in 1992, reported that one of the station's elevators had recorded 40 outages in six months and was non-functional for a quarter of that time. Between July 5 and September 8, 1997, trains did not stop at the IRT station while the elevators were modernized. The NYCTA opted to close the station entirely because it would have taken two years to replace the elevators one at a time and because the staircase to the station could not handle the 18,000 passengers that used the station every day. The project cost $4 million (equivalent to $ million in ). The attendants at the five stations are primarily maintenance and cleaning workers who suffered injuries that made it hard for them to continue doing their original jobs. The agency had intended to remove all the attendants at these stops, but kept one in each station after many riders protested. In addition, the MTA began operating all elevators at all times; prior to the change, each elevator only operated if it was staffed by an elevator operator. The change took effect on January 20, 2004, and was expected to save $1.15 million a year. MTA employees had joined riders in worrying about an increase in crime as a result of the cuts after an elevator operator at 181st Street on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line helped save a stabbed passenger. The move was intended to save $1.7 million a year. However, on December 7, 2007, the MTA announced that it would not remove the remaining elevator operators at these stations, due to pushback from elected officials and residents from the area. In October 2018, the MTA once again proposed removing the elevator operators at the five stations, but this was reversed after dissent from the Transport Workers' Union. The MTA again suggested reassigning elevator operators to station-cleaner positions in June 2023, prompting local politicians to sue to prevent the operators' reassignments. The IRT station was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 2005. The IRT elevators remained unreliable in the early 21st century; in 2007 alone, one of the station's elevators malfunctioned 18 times while passengers were inside. From 2013 to 2016, the IRT station was partially renovated, with the station ceiling and northbound platform tilework replaced with replicas and flooring replaced. After a series of elevator malfunctions in 2017, elected officials began advocating for the replacement of the IRT station's elevators, which were nearly twice as old as the average elevator in the New York City Subway system. By then, the elevators broke down hundreds of times per year, inconveniencing passengers who needed to travel to Columbia University Medical Center. From January 5 to December 20, 2019, the IRT station was closed so the elevator cars could be replaced, and elevator shafts, mechanical components, and the stairways could be upgraded. During this time, a free out-of-system transfer was provided to the at
Inwood–207th Street, from both
207th Street and
215th Street. The IND station was planned to be renovated starting in 2016 as part of the 2010–2014 MTA Capital Program. An MTA study conducted in 2015 found that 48 percent of components in the IND station were out of date. According to a study conducted by
New York University researchers and published in 2024, the 168th Street IRT station had some of the highest
particulate matter pollution levels of any subway station in New York City.
Service history IRT station After the first subway line was completed in 1908, the station was served by West Side local and express trains. Express trains began at
South Ferry in Manhattan or
Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and ended at
242nd Street in the Bronx. Local trains ran from City Hall to 242nd Street during rush hours, continuing south from City Hall to South Ferry at other times. In 1918, the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line opened south of
Times Square–42nd Street, and the original line was divided into an H-shaped system. The original subway north of Times Square thus became part of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line. Local trains were sent to
South Ferry, while express trains used the new
Clark Street Tunnel to Brooklyn. The IRT routes at the station were given numbered designations in 1948 with the introduction of
"R-type" rolling stock, which contained
rollsigns with numbered designations for each service. The route to 242nd Street became known as the
1. All 1 trains became local in 1959, and increased and lengthened service was implemented during peak hours on the 1 train on February 6, 1959. In April 1988, the
New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) unveiled plans to speed up service on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line through the implementation of a
skip-stop service: the
9 train. When skip-stop service started in 1989, it was only implemented north of
137th Street–City College on weekdays, and 168th Street was served by both the 1 and the 9. Skip-stop service ended on May 27, 2005, as a result of a decrease in the number of riders who benefited.
IND station The A express train has always served the IND station since its inception in 1932. The AA was discontinued in 1933 when the
CC began running on the local tracks along the Eighth Avenue and
Concourse lines. The original
BB train started running with the opening of the
Sixth Avenue Line on December 15, 1940, ran as a rush-hour only local service starting at 168th Street–Washington Heights. The "B" designation was originally intended to designate express trains originating in Washington Heights and going to
Midtown Manhattan on the Sixth Avenue Line. The AA was resurrected when the BB was created, running outside rush hours. On March 1, 1998, the B and the C switched northern terminals, ending B service to Washington Heights; the C began serving the station at all times except late nights. == Station layout ==