Planning for a
subway line in New York City dates to 1864. However, development of what would become the
city's first subway line did not start until 1894, when the
New York State Legislature authorized the Rapid Transit Act. in which it would construct the subway and maintain a 50-year operating lease from the opening of the line. The old route under 42nd Street became the
42nd Street Shuttle, which ran between Times Square and Grand Central without any intermediate stops.
IRT Flushing Line The
Dual Contracts were formalized in March 1913, specifying new lines or expansions to be built by the IRT and the
Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT). The Dual Contracts involved opening the
Steinway Tunnel as part of the new
Flushing subway line. The route, traveling under 41st and 42nd Streets in Manhattan, was to go from
Times Square through the tunnel over to Long Island City and from there continue toward
Flushing. The section of the tunnel between
Grand Central–42nd Street and Queens had opened on June 22, 1915.
Construction In July 1920, the
New York State Public Service Commission announced it would extend the Flushing Line two stops west to Times Square, with an intermediate station under Bryant Park. The western end of the Bryant Park station would be east of Sixth Avenue, while the eastern end would be about west of Fifth Avenue. The 42nd Street Association, a local civic group, regarded the station as very important. On November 9, 1921, the New York State Transit Commission opened up the contract for the extension for bidding. The extension would take a slightly different route than the one specified in the Dual Contracts. The original proposal had the line constructed under 42nd Street to a point just to the east of Broadway, which would have forced riders transferring to the
IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line to walk a long distance. On November 22, 1921, the Powers-Kennedy Contracting Corporation was awarded a contract to construct the extension on a low bid of $3,867,138, below the estimated cost of over $4 million. The project was expected to reduce crowding on the 42nd Street Shuttle by enabling riders to use the Queensboro Subway to directly access Times Square. 24,000 of the estimated 100,000 daily shuttle riders transferred to and from the Queensboro Subway. The line was to extend as far as Eighth Avenue to connect with the proposed
IND Eighth Avenue Line. Powers-Kennedy started excavating the line westward from Grand Central in May 1922. The Flushing Line extension was to run beneath the original line from Vanderbilt to Fifth Avenue, running as little as under the original line. The tunnel also had to pass under a sewage line at
Madison Avenue. The construction of the Fifth Avenue station required underpinning the
New York Public Library Main Branch and extending the library's foundation downward. The contractors had completed the tunnels to Fifth Avenue by May 1923. Local civic groups advocated for the Fifth Avenue station to be used as a temporary terminal while the permanent terminus at Times Square was being completed. By the end of 1923, the Transit Commission had allocated $50,000 for the construction of a temporary crossover east of the Fifth Avenue station. The temporary terminal at Fifth Avenue was nearly complete by February 1926. The station had two entrances on the south side of 42nd Street (one next to the library and the other next to the park). A third entrance was placed within the
Stern's building on the north side. The entrance through the Stern's building did not open along with the rest of the station, and opened at a later point. These entrances connected with a mezzanine above the platform. The platform was to be long, though only a section would be used initially as a double crossover to the east of the station still needed to be used while it was a terminal. Even so, many Flushing Line passengers traveling from Queens to the West Side of Manhattan tended to transfer to the shuttle at Grand Central, rather than leave the train at Fifth Avenue. The Flushing Line was extended to
Times Square on March 14, 1927, following various delays. The northern section of Bryant Park, which had been closed for four years during the line's construction, was restored shortly afterward. By 1930, a fourth entrance to the Fifth Avenue station was being constructed from the basement of the
Salmon Tower Building. The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. The
New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) announced in January 1950 that it would lengthen the platforms at the Times Square and Fifth Avenue stations from . The platforms at Fifth Avenue and all other stations on the Flushing Line with the exception of
Queensboro Plaza were extended in 1955–1956 to accommodate 11-car trains.
IND Sixth Avenue Line 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
Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and
Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). The IND Sixth Avenue Line was designed to replace the elevated
IRT Sixth Avenue Line. In 1924, the IND submitted its list of proposed subway routes to the BOT, which approved the program. One of the routes was a segment of tunnel from Fourth Street to 53rd Street. Part of this stretch was already occupied by the
Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H&M)'s
Uptown Hudson Tubes. As a result, negotiations between the city and the H&M continued for several years. The IND and H&M finally came to an agreement in 1930. The city had decided to build the IND Sixth Avenue Line's local tracks around the pre-existing H&M tubes, and add express tracks for the IND underneath the H&M tubes at a later date. The IND started advertising bids for the section of the Sixth Avenue Line between 43rd and 53rd Streets in April 1931. Engineers started planning in earnest for the Midtown portion of the Sixth Avenue Line in April 1935. The city government issued corporate stock to pay for the $53 million cost of the project, since the line was not eligible for federal
Public Works Administration funds. The first contract, for the section between 40th and 47th Streets, was awarded to Rosoff-Brader Construction in October 1935. The next February, mayor
Fiorello H. La Guardia announced that construction would start within six weeks. The contractors were to excavate a construction shaft at Bryant Park (completing the shaft by April 1), upon which they would proceed northward. La Guardia broke ground for the Sixth Avenue subway at Bryant Park on March 23, 1936. The line was built as a four-track tunnel north of 33rd Street (including the Rockefeller Center station), but there were only two tracks south of that street. The work largely involved
cut-and-cover excavations, although portions of the subway had to be tunneled through solid rock. The builders also had to avoid disrupting the Sixth Avenue elevated or the various utility lines on the avenue, and some of the pipes and wires had to be replaced in the process. Excavation work was conducted 24 hours a day, with most of the blasting work being conducted at night. Workers used small charges of dynamite to avoid damaging nearby buildings or the
Catskill Aqueduct, which ran below Sixth Avenue and was a major part of the
New York City water supply system. The contractors built a compressor plant and a shaft at 46th Street, and they excavated another shaft at Bryant Park. Work on excavating the 42nd Street station was further complicated by the fact that it had to be built above the Flushing Line tunnel at 41st Street, but below the
42nd Street Shuttle tunnel one block north. The site of the 42nd Street station had been excavated by mid-1937. The section north of 33rd Street had mostly been excavated by November 1937, including "rough construction work" for the 42nd Street station. In advance of the
1939 New York World's Fair, La Guardia proposed installing a visitors' gallery in the 42nd Street station, detailing the Sixth Avenue Line's construction. The 42nd Street–Bryant Park station opened on December 15, 1940, as part of the opening of the
IND Sixth Avenue Line from
47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center to
West Fourth Street. The opening of the Sixth Avenue Line relieved train traffic on the Eighth Avenue Line, which was used by all IND services except for the
G Brooklyn–Queens Crosstown service. The administration of mayor
William O'Dwyer studied the possibility of converting the IND mezzanine and the adjacent passageway to Herald Square into a parking garage in mid-1946. The city government examined three separate plans for a parking lot with 100 to 500 spaces. BOT chairman
Charles P. Gross dismissed the idea as prohibitively expensive. In a 1951 report concerning the construction of bomb shelters in the subway system in the midst of the Cold War, the BOT proposed constructing a ramp between 40th Street and the 42nd Street–Bryant Park station. In 1956, a marketplace for used books was proposed for the passageway leading to the 34th Street–Herald Square station. The book mart would have housed the Fourth Avenue Booksellers Association, whose members declined an offer to relocate there. Though the BOT created free transfers at many points across the New York City Subway system in 1948, a free transfer was not added between the 42nd Street–Bryant Park and Fifth Avenue stations at the time because of heavy congestion in the "Times Square and 34th Street areas". Starting on December 18, 1967, the
New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) provided paper tickets to passengers, allowing them to transfer between the IND and IRT stations for free during weekdays in the peak direction. Transfers to the IRT were distributed from 5 a.m. to noon, and transfers to the IND were distributed from noon to 8 p.m.. Passengers had to exit one station and use the sidewalk to enter the other. The paper tickets were a temporary measure until the NYCTA completed a passageway within fare control. The NYCTA started constructing a passageway between the two stations in 1969. Workers dug a trench measuring wide and deep, then covered the trench with a layer of fill. The project involved removing 14 plane trees from Bryant Park, which prompted protests from preservationists. The developer of the nearby
1095 Avenue of the Americas office building contributed $500,000 to the station's renovation in exchange for permission to build additional office space. About half of the tunnel was decorated with terrazzo floors; orange brick and tile walls; glass and steel railings; and recessed lighting. The NYCTA completed the tunnel in 1971, upon which it was used by an average of 6,500 passengers during weekdays. The tunnel was decorated with eight porcelain murals, each measuring wide. The murals depicted historical and present-day structures at Bryant Park, including the
Latting Observatory and
New York Crystal Palace. In the late 1970s, the Flushing Line platform was painted beige as part of Operation Facelift, a system-wide refurbishment program led by
Phyllis Cerf Wagner. The IND station had become rundown by the mid-1980s. During this period, the IND mezzanine hosted various art exhibitions, including a showcase of schoolchildren's art and portraits of subway riders from around the world. The 42nd Street/Fifth Avenue station also recorded more felonies than almost any other New York City Subway station during the 1980s. According to a 1986 study, passengers were more likely to be robbed at the 42nd Street/Fifth Avenue station than at any other place in the system.
1990s to 2010s The
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced in 1990 that it would spend $730 million to renovate 74 subway stations, including the 42nd Street station. The passageway to the Herald Square station was closed the following year due to high crime. That October, the MTA announced it had "indefinitely" postponed plans for renovating the 42nd Street station. The MTA again proposed renovating the station as part of its 1995–1999 capital plan. Work was underway by mid-1999, but the project had fallen six months behind schedule, with a planned completion date of October 2002. The IND station, which was formerly known simply as 42nd Street, was renamed 42nd Street–Bryant Park around 2003. In 2011, as part of a renovation of
1095 Avenue of the Americas, the building's owner
Blackstone Group relocated the building's subway entrance eastward by several dozen feet. As part of the development of 7 Bryant Park in 2012 and 2013, the station entrance at the southwestern corner of 40th Street and Sixth Avenue was removed, and a new in-building accessible entrance was constructed at the northwestern corner of 39th Street and Sixth Avenue, completed by 2016. The construction of the development had required a relocation of the street staircase at 40th Street to within the building per zoning requirements, but the developer, working with the MTA's Transit-Oriented Development, determined that the building and subway riders would benefit more from having the entrance at 39th Street. Removing the 40th Street entrance enabled the building to have its main entrance face Bryant Park. The easement agreement between the MTA and the property developer was filed on May 14, 2012.
2020s to present A transfer to the
42nd Street Shuttle at
Times Square was built as part of the 2015–2019 MTA Capital Program. A new platform for the shuttle, which would be wide and located between Tracks 1 and 4 (the outer tracks of the shuttle tunnel), replaced the existing curved platforms for tracks 1, 3, and 4. The platform was built along the section of the shuttle that runs under 42nd Street, which is located within a straight tunnel. The whole project was estimated to cost $235.41 million. The Times Square shuttle platform was extended east, and since an emergency point of egress had to be provided, it was also used to allow for a second point of entry at Sixth Avenue, with a connection to the IND Sixth Avenue Line platforms via a secondary mezzanine at the northern end of the platforms. A construction contract was awarded in early 2019, with an estimated completion date of March 2022. The free transfer opened on September 7, 2021, along with the new shuttle platform. In January 2020, the MTA announced plans to make the station complex accessible as part of the 42nd Street Connection Project. New elevators would be installed between platform level and the mezzanine of the Sixth Avenue Line station (one from each platform), a new elevator would be installed between the platform and mezzanine of the Flushing Line station, and two new stairs would be installed in the closed passageway to the
W. R. Grace Building on the north side of 42nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. The project, which was to be completed between October 2021 and October 2023, would be bundled with developer and escalator improvement projects at Grand Central, and would be completed as part of a Design-Build procurement. When the transfer passageway to the 42nd Street Shuttle opened, elevators were planned to be installed between the passageway and at least one of the platforms at a later date. The 39th Street entrance was the only entrance that remained closed in March 2022. In a response to a story by
The City, an MTA spokesman said the entrance had been closed as the corridor at the bottom of the stairs had attracted illegal activities, and MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said that the agency did not have control over the developer. In March 2024, the MTA installed low platform fences on the Flushing Line platform to reduce the likelihood of passengers falling onto the tracks. The barriers, spaced along the length of the platform, do not have sliding
platform screen doors between them. The station's ADA accessibility project was to be funded by
congestion pricing in New York City, but it was postponed in June 2024 after the implementation of congestion pricing was delayed. On January 31, 2025, the MTA put out an RFP for a design-build project to make the station complex ADA-accessible. One elevator would lead from the Flushing Line platform to the mezzanine, one would lead from each Sixth Avenue Line platform to the mezzanine, and one would lead from the passageway to the 42nd Street Shuttle and the northbound Sixth Avenue Line platform. Bathrooms at the Sixth Avenue Line station would be modified to be ADA-compliant, a station-complex wide fire alarm system would be installed, ADA boarding areas would be constructed on platforms, fare control areas would be modified, and some stairs at the Sixth Avenue Line station would be relocated. State of good repair work would also be made as part of the project, including repairs to platforms, ventilator, and chamber walls. The project was estimated to cost between $50 million and $100 million, and it was planned to take 1,080 days, or about three years. That December, Paul J. Scariano Inc. received an $84 million contract to install the elevators at the 42nd Street–Bryant Park/Fifth Avenue station complex.
Service history IRT station When the Flushing Line station opened, it served as the western terminus of trains that traveled eastward to Queens. The IRT routes were given numbered designations in 1948 with the introduction of
"R-type" rolling stock, which contained
rollsigns with numbered designations for each service. The Times Square to Flushing route became known as the 7.
Express trains began running during the
1939 New York World's Fair. Super-express 7 trains started serving the station in 1953, running nonstop between Queensboro Plaza and
Willets Point Boulevard during rush hours in the peak direction, but the super-express service was discontinued in 1956.
IND station When the Sixth Avenue Line station opened, the
BB train served the station during weekday rush hours only, running local between
168th Street and
34th Street–Herald Square. The station was served at all times by the
D train, which ran from 34th Street to the Bronx, and the
F train, which ran from Brooklyn to Queens. With the completion of express tracks between West Fourth and 34th Streets in 1967, as well as the portion of the
Chrystie Street Connection connecting the Sixth Avenue Line with the
Manhattan Bridge, the B and D trains started running express on the Sixth Avenue Line. The 57th Street station opened in 1968, upon which trains to 57th Street began serving the 42nd Street station. The portion of the Chrystie Street Connection connecting the Sixth Avenue Line with the
Williamsburg Bridge opened on July 1, 1968, and was used by the
KK train until that route was discontinued in 1976. The Sixth Avenue Line station was also served by the
JFK Express from 1978 to 1990 when it was discontinued. When the Manhattan Bridge's north tracks were closed for repairs between 1986 and 1988, the
Sixth Avenue Shuttle stopped at the station, running from
57th Street to Grand Street. The
Q train started running along the Sixth Avenue Line's express tracks in 1988 and continued to operate on the line until 2001. The
V train, which used the Sixth Avenue Line's local tracks, began serving the station in December 2001. The V train was discontinued in 2010 and replaced by the M train. ==Station layout ==