10 weirdest stations of the New York subway

A system this old accumulates mistakes, compromises and outright oddities, and unlike most cities New York never had the money to tidy them away. The result is a network where one station is 173 feet underground, another is 87 feet in the air, one sits on an island with 3,000 residents, and one exists mainly so people can bet on horses.

Ten stations that are genuinely strange, not just photogenic. Line bullets and spellings follow the data behind DailyMetro New York; you can browse the whole set in the New York explorer.

1. 191st Street (1): the one you take a lift to

The deepest station in the system, roughly 173 feet (53 m) under Washington Heights, because the 1 had to hold its grade straight through a rock ridge. There is no staircase that makes sense at that depth, so the station has elevators, and unusually for New York they are still attended.

The alternative exit is stranger. A 1,000-foot tunnel runs west from the mezzanine to Broadway, lined with murals, lit like an underpass, and carrying its own official street name: Tunnel Street. It opened in March 1913, two years after the station itself, because the neighbourhood on the other side of the hill had no reasonable way in.

2. Smith-Ninth Streets (F, G): the sky platform over the Gowanus

Platforms 87.5 feet above ground, which was the highest rapid transit station anywhere in the world from 1933 until Hualongqiao opened in Chongqing in 2022. The reason is bureaucratic rather than heroic: the viaduct had to clear the vertical-lift bridge over the Gowanus Canal, which in turn had to clear masted ships.

Those ships stopped coming long ago and the station is still up there, reached by a stair climb riders on the F and G describe in unflattering terms. It closed entirely from June 2011 to April 2013 while the concrete holding it up was replaced.

3. Broad Channel (A, S): the least-used station in New York

Out in the middle of Jamaica Bay, on an island of about 3,000 people, sits the quietest station in the system: 57,312 entries in 2024, ranked 423rd of 423. The A reaches it across a trestle that the Long Island Rail Road built and then gave up on after a fire destroyed part of it in May 1950. The city bought the line and reopened it as subway in June 1956.

The entry count understates it, because Broad Channel's real job is transfers: it is where riders swap between the A and the Rockaway Park Shuttle, one of the three separate runs the MTA files under a single S bullet.

4. Aqueduct Racetrack station (A): a station for a racetrack

Opened in September 1959 to serve Aqueduct Racetrack, closed in 1990, reopened in 1997, closed again in 2011 and reopened in August 2013 after a 15 million dollar rebuild that added an enclosed walkway to the Resorts World casino next door. It now runs around the clock, which is generous for a stop that recorded 171,518 entries in 2024, 416th of 423.

The detail that says everything: a 2014 analysis of MetroCard swipes found that 72.6 percent of riders entering at Aqueduct Racetrack used a senior citizen discount, by far the highest share in the system. Almost nobody uses this station to get to work.

5. Chambers Street (J, Z): the grand station that rotted

The BMT opened this in August 1913 as its Manhattan showpiece under the Municipal Building, planned with five platforms and four tracks and briefly proposed at six. Once the Nassau Street Line was extended to Brooklyn in 1931 most of that became surplus: the centre island platform and two side platforms were abandoned, and one was demolished outright in the early 1960s.

What remains is a cathedral-scale space with a high tiled ceiling, a walled-off half you can see through the gloom, and abandoned restroom doorways with their original stone lintels. Railfans voted it the ugliest station in the system in 2003, and NY1 in 2018 called it one of the most decrepit in the city. Ride the J through it and you will not argue.

6. Hoyt-Schermerhorn Streets station (A, C, G): the film set

A six-track IND station whose outer platforms were built for a shuttle to Court Street that lasted ten years. The shuttle died in 1946; the outer platforms hung on for Aqueduct racetrack specials until 1981 and have been out of revenue service ever since.

Because they are unused but fully intact 1930s subway, they are one of the most filmed spaces in New York. The Warriors and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three were shot there, and the mezzanine is the set for Michael Jackson's 1987 Bad video, which in 2009 prompted a serious proposal to rename the station after him. Riders on the A, C and G use the middle platforms and mostly never notice.

7. 34th Street-Hudson Yards (7): the diagonal lift

The newest terminal on the 7, opened on 13 September 2015, and the third deepest station in the system at about 125 feet down. Getting people out of a cavern that deep produced the system's only inclined elevators: two custom cabins, 172 feet long, running at 27 degrees up the side of the escalator bank.

They were also the reason the station opened late, repeatedly. The extension cost 2.4 billion dollars for one stop, after a planned intermediate station at 10th Avenue was cut to save 500 million.

8. Bowery (J, Z): the emptiest platform in Manhattan

Bowery is the shortest station name in the network and one of its quietest Manhattan stops, 879,248 entries in 2024, ranked 318th of 423. It was built big, in 1913, for a Nassau Street Line that was supposed to matter more than it does. A 2004 to 2005 reconfiguration removed the express service through here and took most of what remained.

Its southbound side platform is sealed off from passengers entirely. Not demolished, just closed, and rented out: fashion shows, a police counter-terrorism drill and dozens of shoots a year happen on a platform 20 feet from riders waiting for the Z.

9. Newkirk Plaza station (B, Q): the station with a shopping street on the roof

The Brighton Line runs through Flatbush in an open cut, and in 1913 someone decked over the cut at Newkirk Avenue and put shops along both sides of the resulting pedestrian walkway. It is often described as New York's first shopping mall, which depends on your definition, but it is certainly a small-town main street sitting directly on top of four subway tracks.

The walkway is city property, maintained by the Department of Transportation; the shops are private and mostly family-run. Below it, the B and Q call at a standard express station whose only entrance is the station house in the middle of the plaza.

10. Roosevelt Island: the stop under the river bed

The 63rd Street Line was dug as a double-deck tunnel, subway above, railroad below, and the station under Roosevelt Island sits about 100 feet down, fourth deepest in the system. It opened on 29 October 1989 on a line that went nowhere useful in Queens, which earned the whole thing the nickname the tunnel to nowhere until the Queens Boulevard connection opened in 2001.

The lower deck sat empty for 34 years. It finally carried passengers in 2023, when Long Island Rail Road trains started running through it to Grand Central Madison. There are not many places where you can stand on a subway platform and be told that a commuter railroad is directly underneath you.

Where the abandoned ones went

Several stations on this list are half-abandoned rather than odd by design, and New York has plenty that are fully gone: City Hall, Worth Street, 91st Street, Myrtle Avenue and the rest. Those are covered in the ghost stations of the New York subway. For the network-wide records and history, see 10 things to know about the New York subway.