Avenue H
Avenue H is a very unusual subway station, like most on the Brighton Line, just north of the station (between it and the Newkirk Avenue Station), trains rise up from the open-cut trench with overpasses there in up to a higher embankment with, streets crossing in tunnels beneath the tracks. The station is only slightly raised from ground level because Avenue H can't continue beneath the tracks. The line stays this way until Sheapshead Bay, when it becomes a conventional elevated above city streets. The tracks pass over (blocked by a windscreen) the Long Island Railroad's Bay Ridge Branch, proposed to reopen as part of the Interborough Express
The Avenue H Station has two quite narrow side platforms for a four-tracked Brighton Line express station. These both have standard cream-painted windscreens along their entire lengths. There is a canopy only towards the northern end of the station's platforms where the station's exits are.
The station's main exit is currently a bank of turnstiles in a small, shabby looking station house (that feels more like a country train station than a subway stop, its shared with a driving school) on the Manhattan side of the Right-Of-Way. At the Southeast Corner of Avenue H (that just beyond the station house dead-ends at the tracks), and a section of East 16th Street (another half-block long dead end). This historic building was built around 1905 originally to sell real estate in the surrounding community and was converted into a train station in 1907. To reach the Manhattan-bound platform a short half stairway leads up to it.
To reach the Coney Island-bound platform there's a short staircase down into a tunnel, that is also a throughway for non-subway passengers (there is a fence along the length of this tunnel beneath the four subway tracks), this tunnel, a continuation of Avenue H, leads beneath all four subway tracks before there's a High Exit Turnstile and a short tunnel that leads staircase up to the Coney Island-bound platform. A short tunnel is required under the platform before the staircase up to it because of a building that is adjacent to the tracks that would make the platform too narrow if there was an immediate turnstile This high exit turnstile leads to the western half of Avenue H, that has also dead ended at the subway tracks (just east of a short dead-end stub of a much longer East 15th Street), and is the reason the pedestrian tunnel beneath the tracks is split in half, so pedestrians can continuously walk down Avenue H. There is a second exit from the Coney Island-bound platform via a simple staircase leads down from it to a High Exit Turnstile on the north side (the subway underpass is towards the south side) of Avenue H that has just dead-ended.
2009 to 2011 Reconstruction: The Station was closed to Coney Island-bound trains between September 28, 2009 and September 13, 2010. Manhattan-bound Service was suspended from September 27, 2010 to September 12, 2011. This reconsturction completely rebuilt the station with new green platforms and windscreens in a budgeted at $47.6 million renovation. The historic station house was given a historic renovation bare wooden beams holding up the walls and the shingles restored. The Interior has a restored wooden roof and central brick area that was once the fire place and chimney. Two new entrances were built, vastly imporving access. There is now a bank of turnstiles in middle of the pedestrian tunnel allowing easier access from each side of Avenue H. In addition the Coney Island-bound platform recieved its own small brick unstaffed station house directly along the south side of the tunnel. A few steps lead up to it and a ramp loops around the opposite side of the brick buliding making the station ADA Accessible in the Coney Island-bound direction only. This replaced what was once only a staircase down to a High Exit Only Turnstile.
Photos 1-28: August 13, 2008; 29-31: February 28, 2004; 32-42: November 30, 2011; 43 & 44: January 1, 2012; 45-71: October 25, 2012; 72-83: September 24, 2014
