From afar, the R train subway entrance at the northwest corner 77th Street and Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge doesn’t warrant a second glance.
It looks like any other street-level entryway, with the Helvetica signage, the concrete staircase, and the no-slip step tread at the top of the stairs.
But look closer, and some unique details emerge—like the unusually thick cast iron sides of the entrance.
On those slightly rusty cast-iron sides, you can see strange design motifs. One appears to be a cross, and under the cross a series of rings.
The spikes on the back of the entrance are also curious. Is it part of the design, or a way to keep people from sitting down and lounging around?
With all of these odd features, it’s clear the 77th Street entrance belongs in another era. A little backstory from the archives and an early photo of the station offer some clues.
The station opened in 1916, part of the BMT Fourth Avenue extension that brought subway service to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, and Bensonhurst.
The photo, from January of that year, captures the station when it made its debut.
Though the sign at the top of the entrance and the lights that illuminated it no longer exist, it’s the same entrance New Yorkers use today to get to and from this stretch of Bay Ridge—which at the time was transitioning from a country retreat lined with fine houses and mansions to an urbanized part of New York City.
The opening of the BMT subway accelerated this change. Between 1910 and 1924, the population of Bay Ridge doubled, according to the Historic Districts Council.
By 1940, when the fifth photo was taken, Fourth Avenue and 77th Street still resembled a suburban neighborhood of Queen Anne–style single-family homes.
The station entrance’s original sign and lights must have been removed later, as they’re still visible in the photo.
Though the entrance is the historic part of this subway stop, there’s another relic from the early days of the New York City subway worth noting downstairs on the mezzanine level.
It’s a tiled-over opening for a newsstand, with the old sign (spelled “news stand”) still decipherable.
The ornate entryway might be the only original street-level subway entrance still in use today.
A few historic “head houses” remain part of the cityscape, serving as time-warp entryways for today’s commuters on West 72nd Street and Bowling Green.
[Fourth image: New York Transit Museum; fifth image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]
Tags: 1910s subway entrance Brooklyn still exists,, 77th Street Fourth Avenue Brooklyn subway entrance,, BMT subway Bay Ridge history,, Original Bay Ridge NYC Subway entrance,, Original NYC subway station Brooklyn,, The only original NYC subway entrance
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