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| Re: Lower Level platform 42nd & 8th Ave. (1521170) | |||
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Re: Lower Level platform 42nd & 8th Ave. |
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Posted by Mitch45 on Wed Aug 14 13:52:46 2019, in response to Re: Lower Level platform 42nd & 8th Ave., posted by SLRT on Wed Aug 14 11:31:20 2019. Robert Moses had nothing at all to do with that.If anyone had a hand in putting that station where it was, it was John Hylan, who was Mayor of NYC from 1918 to 1925. The legend is that when he was a young man, he planned to become an attorney and to put himself through school, he was a motorman on the BRT. Apparently one day he was studying a law book when he took a turn on the Fulton Street elevated too quickly, nearly striking a BRT superintendent. Hylan was chewed out and fired. The legend goes that Hylan was so angry about this that he held a grudge against the BRT and IRT for the rest of his life. It was Hylan who proposed that the City build its own subway system, i.e., a system that the City would operate independently and not lease out to a private company, such as the IRT and the BRT. That system was built and opened in 1932 as the "Independent Subway System", or IND. The legend further states that when Hylan realized that the 8th Avenue branch of the IND system would pass above the end of the IRT Corona line at Times Square, he insisted that the City construct a lower level station at 8th Avenue/42nd Street station. This station would run perpendicularly to the end of the IRT tunnel west of Times Square and would effectively block the IRT's ability to extend the line further west. The plan worked perfectly, as the line remained cut off for over 75 years after that. There are photos of the tunnel extension work on the IRT line in connection with the Hudson Yards project. The 42nd Street lower level platform walls really were right up against the end of the tunnel. |
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