86th Street is a station on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway, located at 86th Street and Fourth Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. It is served by the R train at all times.
This underground station, opened on April 14, 1916, has two tracks and a single island platform. The platform and mezzanines above have dark green columns, some of which have the standard black station name plate with white lettering. The track walls are fully black with dark green and brown paint except for a small section at the extreme north end, where they have white tiling. The platform has several employee-facilities that have a mosaic trim line.
This station has two entrance/exits. The full-time one is at the south end. Two staircases from the platform go up to a mezzanine that has a turnstile bank and bodega within fare control. Outside fare control, there is a token booth and two staircases going up to either southern corners of 86th Street and Fourth Avenue. The station's other fare control area is unstaffed. Two staircases from the platform, one of which is now closed, go up to a mezzanine that has two High Entry/Exit Turnstiles and a single staircase going up to the southwest corner of 85th Street and Bay Ridge Avenue. Both mezzanines have their original mosaic trim line.
The station was originally planned to be a four-track express station. The platform is located between what would be the two southbound tracks as north of this station, the current southbound track swings out around the platform while the northbound one remains straight. There are also large portions of the mezzanines that are now used for employees only.
This station was the original terminal for the BMT Fourth Avenue Line until Bay Ridge – 95th Street opened in 1925.
In 2007, then-13th District Congressman Vito Fossella and 22nd District State Senator Marty Golden secured funding for an $8.5 million renovation, to be finished in 2010. The plans call for repairing staircases and installing new tiling for walls and floors as well as ADA-compliant yellow safety treads along the platform edges.
Famous quotes containing the words street, fourth and/or avenue:
“And men left down their work and came,
And women with petticoats coloured like flame.
And little bare feet that were blue with cold,
Went dancing back to the age of gold,
And all the world went gay, went gay,
For half an hour in the street to-day.”
—“Seumas” “O’Sullivan” (1879–1958)
“The fourth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Four colly birds,”
—Unknown. The Twelve Days of Christmas (l. 13–15)
“I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)