The Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue station (also known as Coney Island Terminal and signed on some trains as either Coney Island or Stillwell Avenue) is a New York City Subway terminal in Coney Island, Brooklyn. It is the railroad-south terminus for the D, F, N, and Q trains at all times and for the <F> train during rush hours in the peak direction.
Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue has eight tracks and four island platforms, with trains entering from both compass north and south. Opened in 1919–20, the large facility was designed at a time when Coney Island was the primary summer resort area for the New York metropolitan area, with all of the rail lines in southern Brooklyn funneling service to the area. The station has seen many service patterns throughout its history, and was completely renovated from 2001 to 2004.
The station is located at the corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues in Coney Island, the site of the former West End Terminal. Geographically, the station is the southernmost terminal in the New York City Subway system. In addition, it is one of the largest elevated transportation terminals in the world.
History
Origins
Rail transportation to Coney Island had been available since 1864. The Brooklyn, Bath and Coney Island Railroad was the first steam railroad to Coney Island. It ran from Fifth Avenue and 36th Street in what is now Sunset Park, to its West End Terminal, at the present-day Coney Island Terminal's location, along what is now the right-of-way of the West End Line. The nearby Culver Depot, along the Atlantic Ocean waterfront near the site of the present-day West Eighth Street station, served the Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Coney Island Railway (now the Brighton Line) and Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad (now the Culver Line). Other rail transportation included The Manhattan Beach Railroad; The Sea Beach Railroad; The Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad; a route to Long Island City via the Long Island Rail Road; and the Norton's Point Line trolley to what is now Sea Gate.
These railroads were not all connected to each other, resulting in a series of spur lines crossing the island. However, the Brighton, Culver, Sea Beach, and West End railroads were acquired by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) by the late 1890s, and the Dual Contracts, signed in 1913, allowed many more subway lines to be built within New York City, which had been incorporated fifteen years prior.
New West End Terminal
In the late 1910s, a completely reconstructed New West End Terminal station (which gradually became better known as Coney Island Terminal station) was built on an elevated structure. The new terminal unified the terminals of most of the former steam railroad lines terminating at Coney Island, aside from the Long Island Rail Road-controlled New York and Manhattan Beach Railway. This new terminal could accommodate hundreds of thousands of passengers a day. This project entailed rerouting the Brighton and Culver Lines from a ground-level alignment to an elevated structure with eight tracks and four platforms.
The BRT-operated Sea Beach Line, which served the terminal, opened on September 5, 1917, and the BRT West End Line had been similarly inaugurated on December 23, 1918. The terminal officially opened on May 29, 1919, when the new Brighton Line opened. With the opening of the Culver Line on May 1, 1920, the terminal was finally completed.
As a result of the Culver Line extension, the BRT's double fare to Coney Island expired, and was cut from 10 cents to 5 cents, and Coney Island became a more affordable vacation area compared to in previous years. In 1923, these lines came under the control of the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), the BRT's successor company. Riders at the new station were promised trains that ran every three minutes during rush hours, but this quickly proved not to be true. In 1923, a reporter for the Brooklyn Standard Union observed that rush hour trains had headways of eight minutes on the Sea Beach Line and fifteen minutes on the West End Line, and that no direct Manhattan service was being run on either the Brighton or Culver Lines during rush hours.
In 1929, the BMT announced a new entrance for the station. This new entrance would have retail space that would be "periodically inspected." In June 1933, a new Brighton–Franklin weekday service was announced. This service would operate express (except in evening rush hours) providing a direct route from Franklin Avenue to Coney Island. Culver elevated trains would operate to either Sands Street or Park Row depending on the time of day.