86 Street
86 Street today is the only express stop on the entire subway system that do not have a free crossover or under. Previously 72 Street on the Broadway Line before the new headhouse was built in 2000, due to the arrangement of the turnstiles, and Nostrand Avenue on the Fulton Street Line from 1990 to 2021 when the Bedford Avenue entrance and mezzanine were closed also qualified. This is due to the stacked nature of the station with the local tracks above the express tracks and each track having its own side platform giving the stop a total of four.
Each local platform has a single fare control area directly on it in the middle of the platform. The local and express platforms are connected for each direction by a total of four staircases. Two are directly along each side of the fare control area, the third is about half-way towards the southern end of the platforms, the fourth half-way towards the northern end. At these locations the platforms become narrower.
The stop was renovated in the mid-2000s, and each platform has a standard dual-contracts era trimline of yellows and browns with 86s inside it (in an unusual circle format), name tablets spell out 86th Street in white on reddish brown background with a light brown inner boarder and green outer boarder. Columns now painted teal (red before the renovations) are along both platforms.
These fare control areas each have a bank of turnstiles with the uptown platform's now unstaffed, downtown has the token booth. Exits from them for the uptown platform consists of two street stairs up to the SE corner of 86 Street and Lexington Avenue. The NE corner has a more complicated recent history. Until 2017 before the building was demolished, the NE corner required walking through a small underground shopping arcade with a gold buyer jeweler, barber shop, shoe repairer, and a locksmith.
These led to two entrances from the street here surrounded by signs advertising the shops. In 2017, construction of an 18 story apartment tower resulted in a temporary staircase being constructed close to the middle of Lexington Avenue to provide access from this corner into the busy subway station. Once construction was complete, the developer paid to build and maintain and elevator and new streetstair in a bulb-out along 86 Street at the NE corner of Lexington Avenue. A final new entrance was built via a staircase set inside an alcove of the building along Lexington Avenue just beyond the corner (similar locations to the two entrances into the shopping arcade). This privately built elevator made only the Uptown 6 platform accessible at 86 Street.
Access to the downtown platform is by almost identical arrangements to the pre-2017 uptown platform. Two streetstairs out to the SW corner and two storefront entrances in a store that houses a Best Buy although there is not a shopping arcade, to the NW corner. At this corner there was a Gimbel's Department store from 1968 to 1986 that included a direct entrance from the subway to the basement. The building was demolished in the 1990s resulting in the current residential high-rise with street level (and second-level) retail.
Photos 1: July 22, 2003; 2: November 18, 2003; 3: November 8, 2004; 4-6: August 15, 2008; 7-9: July 28, 2009; 10 & 11: June 10, 2011; 12-24: August 12, 2011; 25-30: 31 October, 2012; 31-46: November 24, 2023
