The Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street station is a New York City Subway station complex served by the IRT Flushing Line and the IND Queens Boulevard Line. Located at the triangle of 74th Street, Broadway, and Roosevelt Avenue on the border of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst in Queens, it is served by the 7, E, and F trains at all times; the R train at all times except late nights; the M train on weekdays during the day; and the <F> train during rush hours in the reverse peak direction.
The complex consists of two stations: the elevated station at Broadway–74th Street, built for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT), and the underground IND station at Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue, built for the Independent Subway System (IND). The elevated station was built as part of the Dual Contracts and opened on April 21, 1917; the station was also served by the BRT and its successor, the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, until 1949. The IND station opened on August 19, 1933, and was the terminus of the Queens Boulevard Line until 1936. Escalators between the two stations were installed in the 1950s, and the complex was substantially rebuilt between 2000 and 2005.
The IRT Flushing Line station has two side platforms and three tracks; rush-hour express trains use the inner track to bypass the station. The IND Queens Boulevard Line station has two island platforms and four tracks. A third platform above the Queens Boulevard Line platforms was completed as part of the IND Second System but never opened. The station complex contains elevators, which make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. There is also an at-grade bus terminal, known as the Victor A. Moore Bus Terminal, next to the station's main entrance at Broadway and Roosevelt Avenue. In , it was the busiest subway station in Queens and the busiest subway station in the system.
History
Development
IRT station
The 1913 Dual Contracts called for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT; later Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, or BMT) to build new lines in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Queens did not receive many new IRT and BRT lines compared to Brooklyn and the Bronx, since the city's Public Service Commission (PSC) wanted to alleviate subway crowding in the other two boroughs first before building in Queens, which was relatively undeveloped. The IRT Flushing Line was to be one of two Dual Contracts lines in the borough, along with the Astoria Line; it would connect Flushing and Long Island City, two of Queens's oldest settlements, to Manhattan via the Steinway Tunnel. When the majority of the line was built in the early 1910s, most of the route went through undeveloped land, and Roosevelt Avenue had not been constructed. Community leaders advocated for more Dual Contracts lines to be built in Queens to allow development there.
The 74th Street station opened on April 21, 1917, as part of an extension of the line from Queensboro Plaza to 103rd Street–Corona Plaza. At the time, the station was known as Broadway. The IRT agreed to operate the line under the condition that any loss of profits would be repaid by the city. The opening of the line helped spur the development of Jackson Heights, Queens, which previously had been farmland. In 1923, the BMT started operating shuttle services along the Flushing Line, which terminated at Queensboro Plaza. The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. 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 route from Times Square to Flushing became known as the 7.
IND station The Queens Boulevard Lines 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, with a stop at Roosevelt Avenue.See:
Board of Transportation of the City of New York Engineering Department, Proposed Additional Rapid Transit Lines And Proposed Vehicular Tunnel, dated August 23, 1929 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, Roosevelt Avenue 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. Although the line ran along Queens Boulevard for much of its route, the segment in western Queens was diverted northward to serve Jackson Heights. The line was constructed using the cut-and-cover tunneling method. Temporary bridges were built over the trenches to allow pedestrians to cross, and Roosevelt Avenue was partially closed. Construction of the line between Manhattan and Jackson Heights was split into four phases; by late 1931, these phases were between 90% and 99% complete.
Before the IND station opened, Bickford's leased a store within a two-story building that housed one of the subway's entrances. The Roosevelt Avenue station opened on August 19, 1933, as the terminus of the first section of the line, which stretched from the connection to the Eighth Avenue Line at 50th Street. Three thousand people converged at the station's 73rd and 74th Street exits, hoping to be the first to ride. A transfer to and from the Flushing Line station at Broadway was implemented. One real-estate expert wrote that the station was "the only place in Queens where the interchange between the elevated and the subway system can be made at a common point". Initially, the line was served only by E trains, which ran local. In its first year, the IND station collected nearly two million fares, more than the IRT and BMT collected at the Broadway station. By 1938, the station recorded over five million annual entries.
The construction of the new Roosevelt Avenue complex led to increased demand for housing in the area. It also inspired plans for an unbuilt shopping mall nearby, and real-estate investors speculated that sales and rentals of real estate on Roosevelt Avenue would increase significantly. However, no large commercial developments were built around the station in the years after the IND station opened. The station was the Queens Boulevard Line's terminus from 1933 until an extension east to Union Turnpike opened on December 31, 1936. The E began making express stops on the line in 1937, and local GG trains began serving the Roosevelt Avenue station at the time. With the opening of the IND Sixth Avenue Line in 1940, F trains began running express along the Queens Boulevard Line west of 71st Avenue, stopping at the Roosevelt Avenue station.
As part of the never-completed IND Second System, announced in 1929, the Winfield Spur line would have diverged from the Queens Boulevard Line just east of the Roosevelt Avenue station. A second station was built for this line above the Queens Boulevard Line platforms; the Winfield Spur station was finished but never opened.
Station complex
1940s and 1950s In 1940, Victor Moore, a notable Broadway performer and Freeport resident, asked the New York City Board of Estimate for permission to build a $375,000 bus terminal in his name near the station. When the Board of Estimate approved the project that December, Moore invited board members to see his musical Louisiana Purchase at the Imperial Theatre. Moore acquired all remaining lots on the block in February 1941 and began construction on the terminal that June, obtaining a $250,000 mortgage for the project. Nine businesses signed lease for the terminal in September, and the Victor Moore Arcade officially opened on December 11, 1941. It served as a hub for the operations of Triboro Coach, allowing subway passengers to transfer to and from buses for distant neighborhoods and for LaGuardia Airport.
As part of the unification of the New York City Subway system, free transfers between the BMT/IRT and IND stations commenced on July 1, 1948; initially, passengers were issued paper tickets. On October 17, 1949, the joint BMT/IRT operation of the Flushing Line ended, and the line became the responsibility of the IRT. In August 1951, the New York City Board of Transportation approved the installation of six escalators at the Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street station. The $965,000 contract called for one escalator between the IND mezzanine and either of the IND platforms; two escalators between the IND and IRT mezzanines; and one escalator between the IRT mezzanine and either of the IRT platforms. In 1956, the New York City Transit Authority announced that it would open a request for proposal for additional escalators between the IRT and IND stations. At the time, the station had six exits, but only one token booth in the IND mezzanine, which led to severe congestion during rush hours.
After the end of BMT/IRT dual service, the New York City Board of Transportation announced that the Flushing Line platforms would be lengthened to 11 IRT car lengths; the platforms were only able to fit nine 51-foot-long IRT cars beforehand. The platforms at the 74th Street station were extended in 1955–1956 to accommodate 11-car trains. However, nine-car trains continued to run on the 7 route until 1962, when they were extended to ten cars. With the opening of the 1964 New York World's Fair, trains were lengthened to eleven cars.
1960s to 1980s On May 2, 1970, an out-of-service train collided with another GG train in revenue service on the Queens Boulevard Line. The revenue-service train was switching from the southbound express track to the local track (it had been rerouted around the out-of-service train). Two people died and 71 were injured in the worst subway collision since the 1928 Times Square derailment. Following the 1970 accident, New York Magazine highlighted the state of the subway system in a lengthy exposé, in which it concluded that the subway's condition was getting worse compared to previous years. The station remained a transfer hub for passengers traveling to LaGuardia Airport, which had no direct subway service.
To speed up passenger flow, dozens of platform conductors were assigned to direct crowds on the Queens Boulevard Line platforms during the late 1980s.
1990s and 2000s Triboro Coach leased the Victor Moore Arcade from Arnold Gumowitz for $1 a year until 1997. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) acquired the Victor Moore Arcade in March 1999, paying Gumowitz $9.5 million. Later that year, the MTA began buying out 25 merchants' leases within the arcade in preparation for a $90 million renovation of the station complex. The MTA planned to install four elevators, rebuild staircases, and erect the station's main entrance on the arcade's site. At the time, the station was the second-busiest in Queens, but the bus terminal was too short to fit CNG-powered buses. The arcade's layout was also inconvenient; bus passengers had to walk outside or through a bakery to access the subway, and passengers had to ascend to a mezzanine before they could access the underground Queens Boulevard Line platforms. The passageways were also narrow and convoluted, causing congestion during peak times.