Services that use the IRT Lexington Avenue Line through midtown and downtown have been colored green since 1979. The original IRT numbering system provided for , and on the line.
The Lexington Avenue Line (sometimes called the Lex or the IRT East Side Line) is one of the major lines in the New York City Subway. Part of it was the first subway in New York. The line is the most crowded of the subway system, being the only line east of Central Park. The Second Avenue Line is proposed to fix this problem.
Several stations have been abandoned. When platforms were widened, new entrances were built for adjacent stations, making the abandoned ones redundant. For example, 14th Street-Union Square has an entrance on 16th, and 23rd Street has an entrance on 20th, so 18th Street station was abandoned.
Services that use the Lexington Avenue Line through Midtown and Downtown Manhattan are colored green. The following services use part or all of the Lexington Avenue Line:
north of Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall (where the local tracks end)
The Lexington Avenue Line begins just north of 125th Street, at an underground flying junction of the Jerome Avenue Line (45) and the Pelham Line (6). 125th Street station is laid out interestingly, with uptown trains on the upper level and downtown trains on the lower level. The line runs south under Lexington Avenue to 42nd Street, at Grand Central Terminal. The Metro-North Railroad tunnel ends at Grand Central, allowing the Lexington Avenue Line to switch to Park Avenue south of it. At this shift, a single non-revenue track joins the Times Square-Grand Central Shuttle to the southbound local track, along the alignment of the original IRT subway.
Where Park Avenue ends, the subway shifts onto Fourth Avenue and then Lafayette Street. Lafayette Street merges into Centre Street; at the south end of Centre Street is the abandoned City Hall station, on the loop that the 6 service turns around at. This loop, which the local tracks end at, was the southern terminal of the original subway.
The express tracks of the Lexington Avenue Line then continue south along Park Row and Broadway, leading into the Joralemon Street Tunnel to Brooklyn. Just north of the tunnel, some trains used to run to an inner loop at South Ferry station; this loop is now used to turn 5 trains except during rush hour, when they continue into Brooklyn.
History
The part of the line from City Hall to 42nd Street was part of the original IRT line, opened on October 27, 1904. An extension to Fulton Street opened at 00:01 on January 16, 1905. The next station, Wall Street, was opened on June 12, 1905.[1]
The first revenue train on the South Ferry extension left South Ferry at 23:58 on July 9, 1905; the extension of the IRT White Plains Road Line to West Farms opened just after. The first train ran through the Joralemon Street Tunnel to Brooklyn about 00:45 on January 9, 1908.
The rest of the line, north to 125th Street, opened on July 17, 1918. However, until the evening of August 1, 1918, it ran as a shuttle on the local tracks only, terminating at 42nd Street and at 167th Street on the IRT Jerome Avenue Line (where the connection from the elevated IRT Ninth Avenue Line merged). On August 1, service patterns were changed, and the Lexington Avenue Line became a through route. The IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line also switched from shuttle operation at that time, and the 42nd Street Shuttle was formed along the old connection between the sides. Due to the shape of the system, it was referred to as the "'H' system". Also on August 1, the first bit of the IRT Pelham Line opened to Third Avenue.
Station listing
Station
Tracks
Services
Opened
Transfers and notes
begins as a merge of the IRT Jerome Avenue Line (4 always, 5 all but late nights, rush hours in peak direction) and the IRT Pelham Line (6 always, rush hours in peak direction)
