Division B (BMT) Services L (all times) Opened 30 June 1924 Tracks 2 | Line BMT Canarsie Line Structure Underground Borough Manhattan | |
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Address First Avenue & East 14th Street
New York, NY 10003 Transit connections NYCT Bus: M14A, M14D, M15 (northbound), M15 Select Bus Service (northbound) Locale East Village, Gramercy Park, Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village Similar Third Avenue, Sutter Avenue, Atlantic Avenue, Bushwick Avenue–Aberdeen Street, East 105th Street | ||
First Avenue is a station on the BMT Canarsie Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of First Avenue and East 14th Street at the border of Gramercy, Stuyvesant Town, and East Village in Manhattan, it is served by the L train at all times.
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Station layout
This station opened on June 30, 1924, as part of the 14th Street–Eastern Line, which ran from Sixth Avenue under the East River and through Williamsburg to Montrose Avenue and Bushwick Avenues.
This is the easternmost Canarsie Line station in Manhattan. East of here, the line travels under the East River to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
This station has two side platforms and two tracks. The platforms are columnless and have the standard BMT style trim-line and name tablets. The former contains "1" tablets in standard intervals while the latter consists of "FIRST AVE" in Times New Roman font.
In September 1983 this station was the site of a New York City Transit Police slaying of a black graffiti artist, Michael Stewart, who was writing graffiti on the station wall. The six police officers involved, all of them white, were acquitted by an all-white jury.
Exits
This station's only entrances/exits are at the extreme west (railroad north) end. From each platform, a single staircase goes up to a small mezzanine that contains a turnstile bank, token booth, and two street stairs to the east side of First Avenue at 14th Street. The ones on the Eighth Avenue-bound platform lead to the northeast corner while the ones on the Brooklyn-bound platform lead to the southeast corner. Each mezzanine has two exits to street level (this is the only difference between this station and the next station west, Third Avenue, whose platforms have no mezzanines and only one exit each). There is no free transfer between directions and the mezzanine on the Brooklyn-bound side has a florist shop outside fare control.
In 2019, as part of the wide scope in the rebuilding of the Canarsie Tubes that were damaged during Hurricane Sandy, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is going to build new station entrances on both sides of Avenue A to improve service for people living in Stuyvesant Town and the Lower East Side. New elevators would be built in the station.