Construction and opening The
Queens Boulevard Line was one of the first built by the city-owned
Independent Subway System (IND), and was planned to stretch between the
IND Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan and 178th Street and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. The line was first proposed in 1925. Construction of the line was approved by the
New York City Board of Estimate on October 4, 1928. As planned, Union Turnpike was to be one of the Queens Boulevard Line's five express stops, as well as one of 22 total stops on the line between
Seventh Avenue in Manhattan and 178th Street in Queens. The line was constructed using the
cut-and-cover tunneling method, and to allow pedestrians to cross, temporary bridges were built over the trenches. One of the proposed stations would have been located at Union Turnpike. A map from June 1925 shows a proposed alternate routing for the Queens Boulevard Line, that would have had the line turn via Kew Gardens Road after the Union Turnpike station instead of continuing via Queens Boulevard. After proceeding via Kew Gardens Road, the line would have turned via Hillside Avenue. If this route were used, then Kew Gardens Road would have had to been widened to accommodate the four track line. This alternate routing would have provided for better access to
Richmond Hill. In 1930, in anticipation of growth due to the building of the Queens Boulevard Line, several blocks of land along Queens Boulevard were rezoned so that fifteen-story apartment buildings could be built. On December 18, 1931,
Robert Moses, president of the
Long Island State Park Commission, announced that the
New York City Board of Transportation halted work on the construction of the station to revise the plan for the underpass under Queens Boulevard to eliminate a bottleneck. Originally, the underpass would have been wide; by 1932, the underpass was planned to be wide. On May 7, 1933, it was announced that work on the underpass under Queens Boulevard, which was being done by the Slattery Daino Corporation, would be completed early, and that work would begin the following week on the construction of a temporary roadway over the underpass. The first section of the line opened on August 19, 1933 from the connection to the Eighth Avenue Line at
50th Street to
Roosevelt Avenue in
Jackson Heights. Later that year, a $23 million loan was approved to finance the remainder of the line, along with other IND lines. The remainder of the line was built by the
Public Works Administration. In 1934 and 1935, construction of the extension to Jamaica was suspended for 15 months and was halted by strikes. Construction was further delayed due to a strike in 1935, instigated by electricians opposing wages paid by the
General Railway Signal Company. In August 1936, tracks were installed all the way to 178th Street, and the stations to Union Turnpike were completed. The construction of the extension to Kew Gardens brought significant growth to Queens, specifically in Forest Hills and Kew Gardens. New apartment buildings were being built as a result of the subway line, and it transformed both Forest Hills and Kew Gardens from quiet residential communities of one-family houses to active population centers. Following the line's completion, there was an increase in the property values of buildings around Queens Boulevard. On April 24, 1937, the IND Queens Boulevard Line was extended four stops to
169th Street, with 169th Street and
Parsons Boulevard serving as terminals. On December 15, 1940, trains began running via the newly opened
IND Sixth Avenue Line and along the Queens Boulevard Line's express tracks; they stopped at the Union Turnpike station. On November 23, 1941, the
Q37 bus operated by
Green Bus Lines was extended to the station to provide a transfer to the subway. In the 1950s, an unfinished stairway leading to the busy
Q44A bus stop on the north side of Queens Boulevard at 78th Avenue was completed. Having only one staircase had resulted in dangerous conditions.
Renovations As part of the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s 1975–1981 transit program, lighting at the station was improved. In 1981, the MTA listed the station among the 69 most deteriorated stations in the subway system. In September 1985,
Queens Community Board 6 held a meeting on the proposed closure of the entrances to the station from the Union Turnpike underpass under Queens Boulevard. These entrances, which were used by people being dropped off or picked up by cars, had been already closed for more than a year during the reconstruction of the Interboro Parkway (now known as the Jackie Robinson Parkway). In August 1988, as part of the MTA's
Arts for Transit program, a series of wooden sculptures depicting cirrus clouds made by Krystyna Spisak-Madejczyk, titled "Underground Skies-Cloud Forest", was installed on either side of the twenty support columns in the station's western mezzanine. $5,000 in funding for the project was provided by the MTA, with the
Polish American Artist Society matching that contribution. In July 2006, the MTA began work on an $13.9 million project to make the station compliant with the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. As part of the project, three elevators were installed in the station, one between each platform and the eastern mezzanine, and one from that mezzanine to the street. A ramp and cube-glass walls were installed in the passageway connecting the new elevator and the mezzanine. Other improvements that were part of the project included the addition of station agent booths that catered to wheelchair users, as well as new railings, station signs, station
payphones, tactile yellow strips along the platforms, and platform fillings to reduce gaps between trains and platforms. The elevator installation was completed in July 2008. ==Station layout==