Prospect Avenue (IRT White Plains Road Line)

Prospect Avenue is a local station on the IRT White Plains Road Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of Prospect and Westchester Avenues in the Bronx, it is served by the 2 train at all times, and the 5 train at all other times except during late nights and rush hours in the peak direction.

This elevated station, opened on November 26, 1904 as part of the IRT Second Avenue Line and renovated in 2006, has three tracks and two side platforms. The center express track is used by the 5 train during rush hours in the peak direction.

The center of both platforms have beige windscreens with green frames and red canopies and green frames and support columns. The ends have waist high, green steel fences with lampposts at regular intervals. The station signs are in the standard black station name plate with white lettering.

This station is very close to street level. As a result, the stations houses are adjacent to their respective platforms and there are no crossovers or crossunders.

On the Manhattan-bound side, one staircase from the northwest corner of Westchester Avenue and 160th Street goes up to the north side of the station house. Another from the northern intersection of Prospect Avenue and 160th Street goes up to the south side. Inside the station house, there is a token booth, turnstile bank, waiting area, and doors leading to the platform. The platform has two exit-only turnstiles, each of which leads to one of the street stairs.

On the northbound side, two staircases from the northeast corner of Longwood and Westchester Avenues go up to the north side of the station house, which has a now closed customer assistance booth, turnstile bank, waiting area, and doors leading directly to the platform. A high exit-only turnstile from the platform leads directly to the staircases. Towards the south end of the platform, another exit-only turnstile leads to a double-flight staircase going down to the northeast corner of Prospect and Westchester Avenue.

Both station houses have heaters. The 2006 artwork here is called Bronx, Four Seasons by Urkrainian artist Marina Tsersarskaya. It consists of stained glass panels on the platform windscreens and station houses depicting images related the four seasons of meteorology.

This station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Famous quotes containing the words prospect, avenue, white, plains and/or road:

    “Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you’re the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he’s been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice, supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn’t commit. And now you play the peevish lover stung by jealously and betrayal. It seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.”
    —Ernest Lehman (b.1920)

    “Belinda lived in a little white house,
    With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
    And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
    And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.”
    —Ogden Nash (1902–1971)

    “The Plains are not forgiving. Anything that is shallow—the easy optimism of a homesteader; the false hope that denies geography, climate, history; the tree whose roots don’t reach ground water—will dry up and blow away.”
    —Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)

    “A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”
    —Milan Kundera (b. 1929)