Re: (rshsdepot) NYC Subway - Park Ave. & 18th St.

["Paul S. Luchter" <luckyshow_@_mindspring.com>]

On my old map this reads 18th Street, why? OK, Worth is subway museum, City
Hall is supposed to be museum..
Isn't there another closed station on the IRT at Prince or Spring?  They
could also use the closed H&M station at 18th on the PATH...

Shouldn't honorable mention go to the restaurant (this portion was closed
off in last few years) that overlooked the platform of the uptown IRT West
Side local platform at Penn Station?

Paul
- -----Original Message-----
From: Bernie Wagenblast <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>
To: RSHS Depot <rshsdepot_@_lists.railfan.net>
Date: Friday, February 08, 2002 4:33 PM
Subject: (rshsdepot) NYC Subway - Park Ave. & 18th St.


18th Street Subway Station Web page (with photos):
http://www.nycsubway.org/irt/eastside/18th.html

Subway 'Ghost Station' Could Become Restaurant

February 7, 2002

The old subway station at Park Avenue and 18th Street seemed to blink as
sunlight poured into its rusting hulk Thursday.

It looked like anything but a place that might be turned into a piano bar.

That's the dream of two New Yorkers who want to open a nightspot 30 feet
under the sidewalk.

"We want to save a piece of New York history," Tim Hunter, 42, said leading
the way down a crumbling iron stairway to a platform lit intermittenly by
the No. 6 train rumbling by.

Hunter and partner Barry Glick, 53, got the wild idea for a subterranean bar
a few months ago after a couple of drinks. Such visions traditionally have a
short shelf life.

But Monday night they will take the first step toward turning the abandoned
platform into a bar and restaurant when their proposal will be heard by
Manhattan's Community Board 5.

Thursday they poked a tiny flashlight into the gloom to describe the
plexiglas wall that would separate customers from the subway noise - but no
the sight of passing trains.

"We hope to build two bars, one on the uptown side of the subway and one on
the other," said Glick, who recently sold the West Side Camera shop he had
owned for three decades.

"And look at this," Hunter said out when the tiny beam of light paused to
pick out an ornate sign that read "Women." "That's where we'll build one of
the restrooms."

They had the enthusiasm of prospectors who had found a vein of gold in a
shuttered mine.

"We"re going to call it the 'Six,' " said Hunter, who sported a "6" pin on
his shirt.

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman said the agency is talking
with the partners and nothing would be overlooked if it means bringing new
revenues in.

Kelly Kinsella, district manager for the communiy board, said one problem
facing the project is that the once-sleepy area along Park Avenue South is
now alive with bars and restaurants, a concentration that has draw residents
' complaints.

The 18th Street stop, decommissioned in 1948 with the expansion of the Union
Square complex, is one of several so-called ghost stations, a dusty group
that includes City Hall, shuttered in 1945, Court Street (1946), Worth
Street (1962) and 91st Street on Broadway (1959).

The closest bar-in-a-subway station was the underground incarnation of
Siberia on the mezzanine of the IRT station at 50th Street, which was
evicted after five years by Rockefeller real-estate types.

"Tell those guys I wish them all the luck in the world," Siberia's owner
Tracy Westmoreland said. "Because they're going to need it."

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