96. Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall Subway Station (IRT)

Location: Under Centre Street between Chambers and Frankfort Streets
Built: 1901-1904
Architect: Heins & LaFarge
National Register Number: 05000674
Listed: July 6, 2005
Visited: Multiple times; mainly December 3 and 14, 2008
Official Documentation: NRHP Nomination Form



In spite of the name, this is not the famous abandoned station at City Hall you may have heard about--the one with vaults and Gustavino tile. No, this is its more anodyne brother. (The other one will be covered...whenever.) Originally known as the IRT's Brooklyn Bridge station, it took over as a terminal and a portal to the mysteries of city government when the City Hall station closed in 1945. Hence the name: Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall.

Like the original City Hall station and twenty-six others, this one inargurated the subway system on October 27, 1904, so its historical import is fixed and clear, but whatever once made it a distinctive aesthetic artifact is unfortunately not for public consumption. Only six years after it opened, the station's outermost platforms were declared redundant and were walled up; later some ends of the remaining platforms were blocked off when they were lengthened in the other direction. These no-go areas, visible only to MTA workers and the occasional subway wonk (not an insult!), have what's left of the station's original tilework. A mid-90s renovation merely references aspects of the original design--like the double-B symbol that used to be heralded by eagles--perhaps out of a sense that recreating the originals would be dishonest, not to mention costly. Not bad, but on the mezzanine level is a bolder kind of referencing: Mark Gibian's Cable-Crossing, which transforms the cabling of the nearby Brooklyn Bridge into sinuous Tyrannosaurus spines.