Division B (BMT) Services R (all times) Platforms 1 island platform Opened 31 October 1925 Tracks 2 | Line BMT Fourth Avenue Line Structure Underground Borough Brooklyn Locale Fort Hamilton | |
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Transit connections New York City Bus: B8, B63 Address Brooklyn, NY 11209, United States Similar Forest Hills ‑ 71 Av, 36th Street, DeKalb Avenue, Bay Ridge Avenue, 45th Street | ||
Bay Ridge–95th Street (originally 95th Street–Fort Hamilton) is the southern terminal station on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Despite the name, the station is actually located in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Fort Hamilton (as its original name implies) at the intersection of 95th Street and Fourth Avenue. It is served by the R train at all times.
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Station layout
This underground station opened on October 31, 1925, with the first train leaving at 2 p.m. Refurbished in the late 1970s, the station has two tracks and one island platform. The tracks end at bumper blocks at the south end of the platform. It was the last to be built for the Fourth Avenue Line and is geographically the westernmost in the subway.
Both platform walls have their original mosaic trim line with name tablets reading "95TH STREET." in Times New Roman font along the entire station except for a small section at the north end, where the platform was extended in the 1950s to accommodate the current standard "B" Division train length of 600 feet. Here, the wall is bare black. The platforms were originally 530 feet in length.
The station was constructed with a signal tower and dispatcher's office.
North of this station, a center layup track forms just north of the diamond crossover, before ending at a bumper block just south of 86th Street.
Exits
The station has two mezzanines above the platform and tracks, but mosaic directional signs indicate they were originally one full-length mezzanine. The closed-off sections are now used for employee-only spaces. The station's larger, full-time mezzanine is at the south end. It has two staircases from each platform, turnstile bank, token booth, two restrooms, and two staircases going up to either western corners of Fourth Avenue and 95th Street. A passageway leads to another staircase on the east side of the intersection, built inside an alcove of 9425 Fifth Avenue. The station's other mezzanine is unstaffed, containing one staircase from the platform, High Entry/Exit Turnstiles, and two staircases going up to either southern corners of 93rd Street and Fourth Avenue. Additional exits were planned at 94th Street, but were never built.
Provisions for proposed extensions
The station is built on the west side of Fourth Avenue due to plans for a possible extension of the express tracks south of 59th Street. This station had been built mainly to facilitate the Staten Island Tunnel, which would have necessitated express service but never materialized.
South of this station, there is a false wall at the end of the tracks for a planned extension to 100th or 101st Street and into the never-built Staten Island Tunnel, connecting this BMT line with the Staten Island Railway (SIRT) Main Line near its Grasmere station. The station would have also connected with the now-defunct South Beach Branch by disconnecting it from the SIRT main line, with the BMT Fourth Avenue Subway taking over service from the SIRT's Fort Wadsworth station to the Wentworth Avenue terminal. At the time it would have been a very different line had this tunnel been built, with through BMT service from Queensboro Plaza to Wentworth Avenue in Staten Island stopping at this station before proceeding to Staten Island, since this station is also the closest point to Staten Island. There were also plans to construct an underground storage yard here. The SIR had been electrified in preparation for the tunnel, and had purchased subway cars similar to the AB Standards of the BMT. The tunnel plan was amended in 1919, moving its location north to Shore Road in Bay Ridge.
Later proposals surfaced to connect the station to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, one of the world's longest suspension bridges, which follows the route of the planned tunnel. The bridge was built without provisions for rail traffic.