Talk:Whitehall Street–South Ferry (BMT Broadway Line)

Untitled

I'm guessing that this is something to do with public transit in New York, but it doesn't really give any explanatory context. (Silverhelm 23:00, 21 August 2005 (UTC))

A note on the station opening date

The infobox gives the opening date as September 20, 1918. This is the date given (without explanation) at nycsubway.org. While this sufficies for Wikipedia's citation requirements, I thought it would be worth further investigation.

On January 1, 1918, The New York Times wrote that "Trains from Whitehall Street to Times Square" would begin running in a few days. On January 5, 1918, the new section of the subway opened, but an article the next day stated that Rector Street was the last stop. It is most peculiar that if the line was curtailed at the last moment, no explanation was given. Several other Times articles in the ensuing weeks confirm that this wasn't an error, and Rector Street was indeed the southernmost station open to passengers. However, trains must have relayed at Whitehall Street, as Rector clearly wasn't designed to turn trains.

On January 14, 1919, the Times published a retrospective of the preceding year's subway construction, and it referred to "the Broadway subway...from Times Square to Whitehall Street," so it seems the Whitehall Street station was open by then. An article on November 16, 1919 refers to the opening of the "lower end of the B. R. T. Broadway subway station at Whitehall Street," implying that the other end had already been open previously.

I tried many combination of archive searches, but I could not find a Times article that noted the opening of Whitehall Street station. The subways received extensive news coverage in those days, so it is surprising that the opening of a new station wasn't considered newsworthy. The evidence, however, certainly does not contradict the September 20 date cited on nycsubway.org. Marc Shepherd 18:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)