Broadway station (IND Crosstown Line)

This opened on July 1, 1937, as part of the extension of the Crosstown Line from Nassau Avenue to Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets.[2]

Station tiles with the misspelled "BRODAWAY" on the right

Ground	Street level	Entrances/exits
Mezzanine		Station agent, fare control, MetroCard machines (unfinished South Fourth Street station)
Basement 2	Side platform
	Northbound	← toward Court Square (Metropolitan Avenue)
	Southbound	→ toward Church Avenue (Flushing Avenue) →
	Side platform

This underground station has two tracks and two side platforms.[4] The G stops at the station at all times.[5] The station is between Metropolitan Avenue to the north and Flushing Avenue to the south.[6]

The platforms have a light green trim line with a black border and mosaic name tablets reading "BROADWAY" in white sans-serif lettering on a black background and light green border. The tiles were part of a color-coded tile system used throughout the IND.[7] The tile colors were designed to facilitate navigation for travelers going away from Lower Manhattan. Because the Crosstown Line does not merge into a line that enters Manhattan at either end, all stations on the line had green tiles.[8][9] The I-beam columns in the entire station are dark grey-blue, with alternating ones on the platforms having the standard black station name plate in white lettering.

Small station signs underneath the trim line read "BROADWAY" in white lettering on a black background. One of the icon tiles on the northbound platform was incorrectly spelled as "BRODAWAY"; this mistake may have been part of the station's original tilework.[10][11][12][13] After the Daily News and several other news outlets reported on the misspelling in February 2009,[10][11][12] the two wrong letters were covered with the correct ones printed on stickers, but the stickers were removed by December 2009. In December 2011, the MTA stated the tiles would remain;[12][13] however, by late February 2020, the tiles with the two wrong letters were permanently swapped.

Exits

The station has a small mezzanine above the platforms and tracks at the south end, allowing a free transfer between directions. Two staircases from each platform go up to the mezzanine.[4]

A turnstile bank provides entrance/exit from the station. Outside fare control, there is a token booth and four street stairs: one to the southwestern corner of Broadway and Heyward Street, and the remaining three to the southwestern, southeastern, and northeastern corners of Broadway and Union Avenue.[14]

A staircase at the southeast corner of Union Avenue and Broadway with the BMT Jamaica Line in the background

The station previously had a full-length mezzanine. However, the northern half was closed and to the public, and parts of it currently hold offices while the rest of the mezzanine is used for storage space.[15] The mezzanine had a street stair to the northwestern corner of Johnson Avenue and Union Avenue, and a small upper landing with street stair to all corners of South 5th Street, Montrose Avenue, and Union Avenue except for the southwestern corner.

A mural by Addam Yekutieli at the unfinished station, part of "the Underbelly Project"

The north end of the Broadway station has been blocked by false walls. This northern third of the platform level area consists of passages that would have served as transfers to an unfinished station on a level directly above the Crosstown Line tracks (provisionally called South Fourth Street or Union Avenue). The unfinished station was built as part of a planned expansion of the Independent Subway System.[15][25][26]

The station is a semi-complete shell with four island platforms and six track beds, having the same layout as Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets station. No rails, tiles, lights, or stairs were built.[27] The unfinished station, which is only about as long as Union Avenue is wide, was designed to be the main transfer point from both a line running under Worth Street and a line running under Houston Street coming from Manhattan with the Crosstown Line. These lines would have become two major trunk lines going east; one would have run under Utica Avenue, and the other would have run towards the Rockaways along Myrtle Avenue and Central Avenue Line.[15][25][28]

The closed mezzanine area of the Broadway station has stairs at its north end to an upper level mezzanine directly above the unfinished station. This mezzanine has stairs leading to the northern corners of the intersection of South 4th Street, Meserole Street, and Union Avenue.[15] However, it has no stairs leading to the unfinished station itself. Like the closed mezzanine area of the Broadway station, the upper level mezzanine is used for storage.

In 2010, dozens of street artists created murals on the walls of the unfinished station over the course of 18 months, collectively called "the Underbelly Project", without clearance from the MTA. Afterwards, the MTA removed access to the transfer passage on the northbound platform at Broadway and replaced dilapidated fencing blocking closed areas with cinderblock walls.[29][30]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Broadway (IND Crosstown Line).

• nycsubway.org – IND Crosstown: Broadway
• Station Reporter — G Train
• Hopetunnel.org — South 4th Street station shell
• Abandoned Stations — IND Second System unfinished stations
• The Subway Nut — Broadway Pictures Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
• Broadway entrance from Google Maps Street View
• Platforms from Google Maps Street View