The WTC Cortlandt station (signed as World Trade Center on walls and historically known as Cortlandt Street and Cortlandt Street–World Trade Center) is a station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line of the New York City Subway in the Financial District of Manhattan. The station is located under the intersection of Greenwich Street and Cortlandt Way within the World Trade Center. It is served by the 1 train at all times.
The original Cortlandt Street station was built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and opened in 1918 as part of the Dual Contracts. The station was renovated in the 1960s when the original World Trade Center was built. Around that time, the portion of Cortlandt Street above the station was demolished to make way for the World Trade Center. The Cortlandt Street station was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. Although service on the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line through the area was restored in September 2002, the station's reconstruction was delayed until 2015 because the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had to first rebuild the World Trade Center PATH station beneath it. After an extensive reconstruction, the Cortlandt Street station reopened on September 8, 2018, as WTC Cortlandt.
The station contains connections to PATH at the World Trade Center station, as well as an out-of-system passageway to the Chambers Street–World Trade Center/Park Place/Cortlandt Street and Fulton Street subway complexes via the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.
History Early history
The Dual Contracts, which were signed on March 19, 1913, were contracts for the construction and/or rehabilitation and operation of rapid transit lines in the City of New York. The contracts were "dual" in that they were signed between the city and two separate private companies (the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company), all working together to make the construction of the Dual Contracts possible. The Dual Contracts promised the construction of several lines in Brooklyn. As part of Contract 3, the IRT agreed to build a branch of the original subway line south down Seventh Avenue, Varick Street, and West Broadway to serve the West Side of Manhattan.
The construction of this line, in conjunction with the construction of the Lexington Avenue Line, would change the operations of the IRT system. Instead of having trains go via Broadway, turning onto 42nd Street, before finally turning onto Park Avenue, there would be two trunk lines connected by the 42nd Street Shuttle. The system would be changed from looking like a "Z" system on a map to an "H" system. One trunk would run via the new Lexington Avenue Line down Park Avenue, and the other trunk would run via the new Seventh Avenue Line up Broadway. In order for the line to continue down Varick Street and West Broadway, these streets needed to be widened, and two new streets were built, the Seventh Avenue Extension and the Varick Street Extension. It was predicted that the subway extension would lead to the growth of the Lower West Side, and to neighborhoods such as Chelsea and Greenwich Village.
During construction of the station, under Dey Street, the hull of a colonial ship was uncovered. Cortlandt Street opened as part of an extension of the line from 34th Street–Penn Station to South Ferry on July 1, 1918. Initially, the station was served by a shuttle running from Times Square to South Ferry. The new "H" system was implemented on August 1, 1918, joining the two halves of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line and sending all West Side trains south from Times Square. An immediate result of the switch was the need to transfer using the 42nd Street Shuttle in order to retrace the original layout. The completion of the "H" system doubled the capacity of the IRT system. The station was built at the intersection of Cortlandt and Greenwich Streets, in a part of Lower Manhattan nicknamed "Radio Row" because of the many electronics dealers on the street. It had a standard two side platform layout with two tracks. There were mosaic decorations by Squire J. Vickers or Herbert Dole depicting ships along each platform's wall. Red I-beam columns ran along the entire length of both platforms at regular intervals.
20th century The city government took over the IRT's operations on June 12, 1940. On August 9, 1964, the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) announced the letting of a $7.6 million contract to lengthen platforms at stations from Rector Street to 34th Street–Penn Station on the line, including Cortlandt Street, and stations from Central Park North–110th Street to 145th Street on the Lenox Avenue Line to allow express trains to be lengthened from nine-car trains to ten-car trains, and to lengthen locals from eight-car trains to ten-car trains. With the completion of this project, the NYCTA project to lengthen IRT stations to accommodate ten-car trains would be complete. Work on the platform extension project took place in 1965 and 1966. During the project, old tiling and mosaics were removed and replaced with the 1970s-style varnished, tan-colored brick tiles. One of the mosaics was preserved in the New York Transit Museum.
In 1965, Cortlandt Street west of Church Street was demolished to create the superblock of the World Trade Center. The station, with entrances at Vesey Street and inside the World Trade Center concourse, was separated from the remaining block of Cortlandt Street. When the World Trade Center was finished, alternating columns on the platforms were retrofitted with black station name plates in white lettering; the name plates alternated between "Cortlandt Street" and "World Trade Center".
During the 1980s, when service levels across the subway system were decreased greatly from their heyday in the 1910s, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority installed the system's first train-frequency schedules at the Cortlandt Street station. Older timetables and maps elsewhere had been removed since they had become inaccurate.
Trains bypassed the station in the aftermath of the February 26, 1993, World Trade Center bombing. Soon after, 1 trains were back to Chambers Street. In 2001, just prior to the September 11 attacks, the Cortlandt Street station saw 19,446 riders per day.
September 11, 2001, attacks
The station and the surrounding subway tunnels were severely damaged in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks following the collapse of Two World Trade Center, resulting in the closure of the line south of Chambers Street. During the September 11 attacks in 2001, a train operator reported an "explosion" to the MTA's Subway Control Center one minute after the first plane struck the World Trade Center's North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Subway service was halted shortly afterward and, as a result, no one in the subway system died. The tunnel had been located underground; the original tunnel had measured wide and high, with columns between the two tracks spaced at intervals of . Being so close to ground level, the station partially collapsed under the weight of the falling debris, which crumpled the steel I-beams of the station.
Soon after the attacks, two options were considered: either the existing line would be repaired, or the tunnel would be diverted westward just to the north of the World Trade Center site before heading to a new terminal at South Ferry. The first option was chosen, and to quickly restore service to Rector Street and South Ferry stations to the south, workers demolished the remainder of the station and built walls where the platforms used to be. of tunnels and trackage, including of totally destroyed tunnels and tracks in the vicinity of the station site as it traversed Ground Zero, were entirely rebuilt. However, officials wanted only to reopen Rector and South Ferry stations at the time, and the Cortlandt Street station was to be closed completely, with no replacement.
Eventually, it was decided that the Cortlandt Street station was to be rebuilt as part of the greater World Trade Center reconstruction project; since the station was such a vital one in the area, a permanent closure was infeasible. As part of the project, the East Bathtub was extended under the line to the eastern boundary of the site at Church Street. George Pataki, who was the governor of New York at the time, stated, "This is going to help more than a million people by restoring service, help the recovery of lower Manhattan and sends a powerful message that New York City can't be stopped." The Port Authority's chief engineer and others tried to convince him to temporarily shut down the line while the new transportation hub at the World Trade Center was under construction. The Governor's decision to keep the line open increased the cost of the project because the subway structure had to be underpinned. The new tunnel measured wide to accommodate the future reconstruction of the Cortlandt Street station; it was otherwise designed to the same specifications as the original tunnel, with columns placed every . The line reopened on September 15, 2002, with trains bypassing the site of the Cortlandt Street station.
The northern entrance at Vesey Street was under a staircase to the plaza above. After the attacks, the staircase still stood and became known as the Survivors' Staircase. The stairs were moved into the National September 11 Museum in July 2008. Reconstruction and delays PANYNJ cleanup
In 2007, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), in the Environmental Impact Statement for the World Trade Center PATH terminal, expected the Cortlandt Street station to reopen in 2009. In October 2008, the PANYNJ stated in a report that it had come to an agreement with the MTA on reconstructing the Cortlandt Street station. The MTA would pay the Port Authority to rebuild the station as part of the Port Authority's World Trade Center Transportation Hub contract, in order to make the construction process more efficient. The Port Authority was set to complete underpinning and excavation under the tunnel structure by the second quarter of 2010, and start basic construction of the Cortlandt Street station during the 3rd quarter. In the second quarter report for 2010, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed that excavation under the tunnel structure of the World Trade Center site was nearly complete, and that construction of the Cortlandt Street station would begin during the third quarter of 2010. Station finishes were set to start during the second quarter of 2011, and work began on the station mezzanine and platforms in September 2011.
The tracks were walled off for the protection of the workers while the construction progressed. From 2008 to 2011, the used an enclosed structure for a short distance when passing the site of the station, as a result of the massive excavation in the World Trade Center site. When the site was filled back in, the developers of the new World Trade Center rebuilt Cortlandt Street across the site as one of the primary roads, resulting in the rebuilt Cortlandt Street station again serving its namesake.
Disputes between the PANYNJ and the MTA over who would pay for the renovation had caused the planned opening of the station to be delayed from 2014 to 2018. In 2013, the PANYNJ awarded a contract to rebuild the station. The first phase of the demolition of the original station cost $19 million. The area was still being rebuilt in December 2013, and in February 2015, the PANYNJ and the MTA agreed to finish the station. The part of the Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line on which the Cortlandt Street station is located, south of Chambers Street, was intermittently closed between May 2015 and 2018. This allowed construction at the station, which included station finishes, tiles and lighting, to resume.
MTA rebuild