Searching for the Lost 76th Street Subway Station, the “Roswell” of the NYC Subway [Photos]

There may be no other subway station more contentious among subway buffs than the 76th Street subway station in Queens, an IND station on the A line near Ozone Park, Queens that the The New York Times calls the “Roswell” of the New York City subway system. Its existence is hotly debated but urban explorer Dark Cyanide told us he’s gotten closer than most and shared the photos of his exploration.

Supposedly in urban lore, the 76th Street station was part of an extension of the A line to 229th Street in Cambria Heights, one of many proposed subway lines that never came to be. The New York Times wrote that “If it exists, in fact, it is nothing more than a dark four-track IND subway station with blue tiles, on the A line near Ozone Park, Queens.”

According to Joseph Brennan of Abandoned Stations (a post that Benjamin Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas says is a joke), the station was in operation for less than a month in 1948. Even then, officials were denying its existence but unions at the time suspected cover up of non-union work and the tunnel to the station was supposedly sealed off in 1952. Brennan has maps and photographs purportedly showing the station’s existence, including one of a train at the platform and one of a subway board at Euclid Station, provided accidentally by the Transit Authority for the book Under the Sidewalks of New York.

But in a comment on our article about never completed and never used subway stations, Benjamin Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas says Brennan’s article was an “part of an April Fool’s Joke capitalizing on Internet mythology about provisioning for a future extension of the Fulton St. Line.”

Still, explorers like Dark Cyanide continue to search. He tells us, it’s an “urban explorer dream to uncover the 76th street station that lies behind a concrete wall. I took [these photos] and behind the buffer is the wall.” Dark Cyanide believes that the station is just behind the wall below:

Interested in more secrets of the subway? Join our next tour of Secrets from Below: Underground Tour of the NYC Subway:

Underground Tour of the NYC Subway

Next read about 5 never used ghost subway stations in NYC and 7 of NYC’s abandoned subway stations.