Oakwood Heights
New Drop is a Staten Island Railway Station located in an open cut with two side platforms for the two-track line. The St. George-bound platform has a concrete wall along it, while the Tottenville-bound platform has a grassy hill on the sides of the embankment leading down to it. The station was fully-grade separated in 1965-1968, received the normal SIR rebuilding in 1985 and further renovated in 2016 with the brick station house’s waiting area restored. On September 19, 2023 the station became fully wheelchair accessible with the building of the first elevators for the Staten Island Railway, outside of the elevator in the ferry terminal at St. George. These elevators are like all modern elevators on the NYC subway with a glass canopy and frosted glass design which looks a little out of place with the station’s still 1980s canopy aesthetics.
The station has two entrances, one at each end of the platforms. At the northern end of the station is a small brick station house on the south side of New Drop Lane. Inside the station house is waiting room with tiled walls, a bench and a countdown clock that was open when I visited on a November morning in 2023. Each platform has a staircase down to it through a small brick enclosed passageway, doors lead into each side of the station house by these staircases. The St. George-bound platform staircase leads straight down while the Tottenville-bound platform staircase passes an intermediate landing and turns since it is along a grassy cut, not a concrete wall.
This end of the station was retrofitted for elevators from 2021 to 2023. The Tottenville-bound platform elevator is accessed via the same entry way bridge that leads to the platform staircase. This bridge was extended slightly to the upper elevator landing where the canopy runs right up to the edge of the elevator. The St. George-bound platform’s elevators are more like a normal subway station’s street elevator. The upper landing is in the middle of the sidewalk along South Railroad Avenue/New Drop plaza between the tracks and the street, just south of the station house. This elevator leads underground to a new little opening in the concrete-work where a new opening in the concrete wall leads out to the St. George-bound platform.
There is a second exit at the southern end of each platform. The Tottenville-bound platform has a small canopy structure at about the rear doors of the last car that leads up to the north side of Rose Avenue. The St. George-bound platform has a smaller canopied section (but the bridge across the tracks for Rose Avenue provides additional shelter) before a staircase at the extreme southern end of the platform leads up to Railroad Avenue just south of its intersection.
Photos 1-10: June 20, 2011; 11 & 12: November 5, 2016; 13-66: November 28, 2023;
