The Little Station in
the Woods by Paul Matus
The T.B. Ackerson Real Estate office in March 1906,
today's Avenue H Brighton Beach Line station house. The reconstruction of
the Brighton Line has already begun. The track seen at the front of the picture
is on the temporary testle which carried the Brighton Line to a
level crossing with the LIRR Bay Ridge Line. View is
looking east. Paul Matus
Collection
Preface
Unlike railroad stations, subway stations are usually notable for being
inconspicuous. Railroad
stations were
often built to reflect their communities, big and little. Where the
impressive Grand Central Terminal and the magnificent Pennsylvania Station
represented New York, even small towns took pride in their stations,
frequently raising their own funds to present visitors with a nice first
impression of their communities. Subway stations are another matter entirely. Usually there is no station
house at all. The functions found in railroad station houses are typically
found in a mezzanine underground or on a platform suspended beneath an
elevated structure. This area, where change is made and tokens and
Metrocards sold, goes under the unlovely name of “controls.”
So it is something special when a subway station
has an old-fashioned railroad station house. One such station is Avenue
H, on the line served by
the D and Q trains in Brooklyn, known as the BMT Brighton Beach Line.
Continued on page 2
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