36th Street

The 36th Street station is a local station on the IND Queens Boulevard Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of 36th Street and Northern Boulevard in Queens, it is served by the M train on weekdays, the R train at all times except nights, and the E and F trains at night.

The Queens Boulevard Line was one of the first lines built by the city-owned Independent Subway System (IND), and stretches between the IND Eighth Avenue Line in Manhattan and 179th Street and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. The Queens Boulevard Line was in part financed by a Public Works Administration (PWA) loan and grant of $25 million. One of the proposed stations would have been located at 36th Street. The first section of the line, west from Roosevelt Avenue to 50th Street, opened on August 19, 1933. E trains ran local to Hudson Terminal (today's World Trade Center) in Manhattan, while the GG (predecessor to current G service) ran as a shuttle service between Queens Plaza and Nassau Avenue on the IND Crosstown Line. The station's northbound platform was temporarily closed in June 2023 for structural improvements.

This underground station has four tracks and two side platforms. The station is served by the R except at night, the M only on weekdays during the day, and by the E and F during the night. The E and F use the two center express tracks to bypass this station during the day. The next stop to the west is Queens Plaza for R and nighttime E trains, and 21st Street–Queensbridge for M and nighttime F trains. The next stop to the east is Steinway Street. The station's tile band is purple with a black border and name tablets have "36TH ST." in white lettering on a black background and purple border. Small directional and name signs are tiled in white lettering on a black background under the tile band and name tablets. The tile band was part of a color-coded tile system used throughout the IND. The tile colors were designed to facilitate navigation for travelers going away from Lower Manhattan. As such, the purple tiles used at the 36th Street station were originally also used at Queens Plaza, the next express station to the west, while a different tile color is used at Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue, the next express station to the east. Purple tiles are similarly used at the other local stations between Queens Plaza and Roosevelt Avenue. Both platforms have royal purple I-beam columns at regular intervals with every other one having the standard black station sign plate with white lettering. The I-beam piers are located every 15 feet (4.6 m) and support girders above the platforms. The roof girders are also connected to columns in the platform walls. The tunnel is covered by a U-shaped trough that contains utility pipes and wires. The outer walls of this trough are composed of columns, spaced approximately every 5 feet (1.5 m) with concrete infill between them. There is a 1-inch (25 mm) gap between the tunnel wall and the platform wall, which is made of 4-inch (100 mm)-thick brick covered over by a tiled finish. The columns between the tracks are also spaced every 5 feet (1.5 m), with no infill. This is one of two stations on the R route that is named "36th Street"; the other is 36th Street on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line in Brooklyn.

Data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).