⁴ᴷ The Worst of Chambers Street (J)(Z) - Ugliest NYC Subway Station

I revisit Chambers Street (J)(Z), but this time focus on the worst areas of the station with my iPhone. This station is truly an atrocity.

From Wikipedia:

"Chambers Street on the BMT Nassau Street Line is located at the intersection of Centre and Chambers Streets beneath the Manhattan Municipal Building. The station has four tracks, three island platforms, and one side platform (originally two).

The southbound platform is slightly higher at the southern end of the station because the next stop south, Fulton Street, is bi-level with the southbound platform being above the northern one. The two "express" tracks, currently unused in regular revenue service, merge into a single tail track south of the station. The tail track is 620 feet (190 m) long from the switch points to the bumper block, where an emergency exit is available.

North of this station, there are two stub tracks, which end behind the now-closed Queens-bound side platform. These tracks were formerly connected to the Manhattan Bridge, until they were disconnected in 1967 as part of the Chrystie Street Connection, with the BMT Broadway Line being connected to the bridge instead. Also north of this station, the former southbound express track (now the northbound track) splits into two tracks just south of Canal Street: the former northbound local track, and the former southbound express track (the current northbound track).

The tile work on this station includes a depiction of the nearby Brooklyn Bridge that has a subtle mistake: it features the parallel up-down cables between the main cable and the roadway (as seen alone on most suspension bridges) but misses the second set of diagonal cables that radiate from the bridge to the roadway (as seen on cable-stayed bridges)."

History

"This was one of the earliest BMT subway stations opened in New York City, built at a time when Lower Manhattan was the city's principal business district. It was designed to be the BMT's Manhattan hub, with trains arriving from Brooklyn in both directions, and terminating here. Originally, trains arrived from the north via either the Williamsburg Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge. The connection to the Montague Street Tunnel had not yet been completed.

The Nassau Street Loop was completed in 1931, making Chambers Street a through station south to the Montague Street Tunnel to Brooklyn. At this point, the center island platform and two side platforms were closed. The west side platform was walled up and partly demolished when Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line was rebuilt on the other side of the wall in 1960–62.

The loop configuration permitted trains arriving in either direction from the BMT Fourth Avenue Line in Brooklyn to pass through Chambers Street and return to Fourth Avenue without having to reverse direction. A track connection to the Brooklyn Bridge, which would have made a similar loop through the Williamsburg Bridge, was planned in the station's design, but never built.

Although altered over the years to account for changing ridership patterns, the station has not been renovated. In a 2003 poll, it was voted the ugliest station in the system.

When it was being built before World War I, Chambers Street was envisioned as a City Hall terminal, a kind of downtown Grand Central Terminal at a time when the business and population center of the city was still closer to the southern end of the island. Three years after it opened, its four wide platforms were so overcrowded that one newspaper article described them as "more dangerous during the rush hours than at the Grand Central or the Fourteenth Street Stations."

But by the mid-1920s, the subway itself was pushing the city's population north and leaving Chambers Street behind. By as early as the 1930s, in fact, the station's ridership had dropped off so steeply that half of it was closed. By the 1950s, many of the city's business interests had shifted to Midtown. The Chrystie Street Connection, completed in 1967, severed the Nassau line's connection to the Manhattan Bridge, so that the bridge tracks could connect instead to the uptown IND Sixth Avenue Line. The tracks heading towards the Manhattan Bridge (now used for train storage) are visible from northbound trains leaving Chambers Street.

The tail track south of the station was the site of an R42 crash into the bumper block on the lower level relay track on November 6, 2007. The train was operating on the M when it crashed."

Filmed April 27, 2018 on an iPhone 8 Plus

[christopherkotsopoulos]

0:32 Great job catching the guy urinating into the tunnel lol

Really adds to the vibe of the video

[claudiaficicchia]

Tiles falling down, garbage everywhere, people peeing on the tracks...I can feel the smell of urine from behind the screen of my phone. Damn it, this station is perfect for filming a horror movie. The trains are the only things that look normal.

[rproductions]

Lol the only renovation the MTA did to this station was add tactile warning plates to the platform edge.

[Tiga-cgpr]

It’s always been an atrocity...


If the MTA weren’t so blind they probably would have renovated this station.

[REXXSEVEN]

5:17 wow, even if that platform is abandoned, the fact that it can still be seen from the rest of the station is just terrible. I wonder when the last time the station got a proper makeover, if at all. It looks like they are taking better care of the platforms that are in service. But the not in service platforms look really bad

[rproductions]

Once I caught someone relieving themselves but ironically at a newer station. The station was the reopened South Ferry station.

[tishaunridley]

I felt like I needed a tetanus shot after I came out of this subway

[REXXSEVEN]

At 5:18 it looks like that platform has been abandoned for at least 30 years. Especially if you look at how old the staircase is and how the handrail on its right side has rusted away.

Some parts of the station have dark orange handrails on the staircases. The NYC MTA has not used dark orange paint on the handrails of staircases in many decades.

[redphone]

This station has 5 platforms. 3 Island platforms only 2 in use. 2 Side Platforms one visible but disused and the other western side platform to broad street was mostly demolished for Brooklyn Bridge Station expansion.

[mitch]

Update: As bad as the station looks in this video, it was actually much worse when I first started to use it in 1995. The station must have been beautiful between 1913, when it first opened, and 1931, when parts of the station were closed. The station is going to be completely renovated and I believe the abandoned side platform, a must-see for any subway fan, will be walled off.

[mitch]

It has actually gotten better. When I first used it in 1995, it was a dungeon. Paint peeling everywhere, wires dangling from the ceiling from where fixtures used to be, water dripping, feces, newspapers. A real horror story.

[jimholder]

This is utterly shocking, a real disgrace! NYC, supposedly one of the "great cities" of the world, permits something like this. By comparison: Berlin and Hamburg, two cities that in 1945 lay in near-utter destruction, have beautiful metro systems. The stations are uniformly bright and clean, and the older historic stations (e.g., Berlin Nollendorfplatz) have been beautifully restored and renovated.

[GoodnightMrDoback]

After watching this suddenly grandmaster flash - the message pops in my head

[Abstractt]

at least they're adding elevators and hopefully making improvements. If you visit the station now, there would be plywood everywhere and several columns were stripped of their tiles, revealing their severely rusted metal frames

[horace]

I would like to stay here for one night

[paulcrowe]

If only a tiny fraction on what was being spent elsewhere on the subway was spent here, I bet this station would look considerably better.

[HANNAHWITHMIKA]

This station is so bad, the MTA need to start renovating this station. They’re spending so much money on the R line from Bay Ridge-95 St- to 36 St to all be renovated when there in really good condition. WHYYYY

[arielgonzalez]

Well, coming this summer, it's major upgrades. Hopefully, it could shut down the station closure or something else for massive station repairs.

[dollartreestreetyard]

Out of all stations this one needs a renovation badly. Either J trains would have 2 terminate at Essex Street or bypass Chambers Street in both directions. I personally would prefer bypassing Chambers Street so people can use alternative service to Fulton Street.

[lukeskywalker]

I'm from Lisbon in Portugal and this is legit nightmare fuel to me. As much as everyone might complain about our metro system, I will always be thankful that it is not like the NYC subway! Our stations are beautiful and mostly well kept and I'll always be thankful for that at least!