West Fourth Street–Washington Square station

New York City Subway station in Manhattan

The West Fourth Street–Washington Square station is an express station and transfer stop on the IND Sixth Avenue and IND Eighth Avenue Lines of the New York City Subway, located at the intersection of West Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It is served by the A, D, E, and F trains at all times; the B and M trains on weekdays; the C train at all times except late nights; and the <F> train during rush hours in the peak direction. The West Fourth Street station was built as an express station for the Independent Subway System (IND)'s Sixth Avenue and Eighth Avenue Lines. It has four island platforms and eight tracks, split evenly across two levels, which are connected by a mezzanine. The Eighth Avenue Line platforms on the upper level opened on September 10, 1932, as part of the IND's first segment, while the Sixth Avenue Line platforms on the lower level opened on December 15, 1940. The West Fourth Street station contains elevators, which make it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

New York City mayor John Francis Hylan's original plans for the Independent Subway System (IND), proposed in 1922, included building over 100 mile (161 km) of new lines and taking over nearly 100 mile (161 km) of existing lines, which would compete with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT), the two major subway operators of the time. On December 9, 1924, the New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) gave preliminary approval for the construction of the IND Eighth Avenue Line. This line consisted of a corridor connecting Inwood, Manhattan, to Downtown Brooklyn, running largely under Eighth Avenue but also paralleling Greenwich Avenue and Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan. The BOT announced a list of stations on the new line in February 1928, with an express station at Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. An additional line, the IND Sixth Avenue Line, was approved in 1925, running from Midtown Manhattan underneath Sixth Avenue, Houston Street, Essex Street, and the Rutgers Street Tunnel to Downtown Brooklyn. The IND Sixth Avenue Line was designed to replace the elevated IRT Sixth Avenue Line. The transfer hub between the Eighth Avenue and Sixth Avenue lines, at Sixth Avenue and West 4th Street in Greenwich Village, was named "West Fourth Street" as opposed to merely "Fourth Street" because the planners of the Independent Subway System believed there would be confusion between this station and "South Fourth Street", a proposed transfer station on the never built IND Second System in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Real estate developers expected that the construction of the West Fourth Street station would spur development around Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan.

Work on the IND Eighth Avenue Line began in 1925. Most of the Eighth Avenue Line was dug using a cheap cut and cover method. The West 4th Street station was to be one of three Eighth Avenue Line stations underneath Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan; the other two stations were to be at Spring Street and Walker Street. This required the demolition of dozens of buildings along the route, including a hotel and several houses within the vicinity of the West Fourth Street station. By August 1930, the BOT reported that the Eighth Avenue Line was nearly completed, except for the stations between Chambers Street–Hudson Terminal and West Fourth Street, which were only 21 percent completed. The entire line was completed by September 1931, except for the installation of turnstiles. A preview event for the new subway was hosted on September 8, 1932, two days before the official opening. The upper level of the West Fourth Street station opened on September 10, 1932, as part of the city operated IND's initial segment, the Eighth Avenue Line between Chambers Street and 207th Street. When the station opened in 1932, express (A) and local (AA) trains served the line; expresses did not run during late nights or Sundays. the C express train started operating, while all locals became CC trains to the Concourse Line. The E began using the local tracks on August 19, 1933, when the IND Queens Boulevard Line opened.

The first portion of the Sixth Avenue Line to be constructed was the Houston–Essex Street Line south of the West Fourth Street station. The contract for the line was awarded to Corson Construction in January 1929, and work officially started in May 1929. The Houston–Essex Street Line opened on January 1, 1936. Two local tracks split from a junction with the Eighth Avenue Line south of West Fourth Street–Washington Square, running east under Houston Street and south under Essex Street to a temporary terminal at East Broadway. The E train, which had traveled to Chambers Street, was diverted along the new line south of West Fourth Street. When the Houston–Essex Street Line was completed in April 1936, E trains and ran to Church Avenue. The Midtown section of the Sixth Avenue Line was much more difficult to construct because part of this stretch of Sixth Avenue was already occupied by the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad (H&M)'s Uptown Hudson Tubes, which ran between Eighth and 33rd Streets. As a result, negotiations between the city and the H&M continued for several years. The IND and H&M finally came to an agreement in 1930. The city had decided to build the IND Sixth Avenue Line's local tracks around the pre existing H&M tubes, and add express tracks for the IND underneath the H&M tubes at a later date. The Midtown section of the Sixth Avenue Line did not begin construction until March 1936. The line was to connect with the lower level of the West Fourth Street station, which had already been constructed. The line's Midtown section opened on December 15, 1940. The F train, which made local stops along the Sixth Avenue Line, replaced the E train along the Houston–Essex Street Line and started serving the lower level of the West Fourth Street station.

The Sixth Avenue Line's Midtown section, comprising the section between the West Fourth Street and 34th Street–Herald Square stations, originally did not have express tracks. On April 19, 1961, ground was broken for a $22 million project to build two express tracks between these two stations. On November 26, 1967, the express tracks started to be used by the B and D trains. At that time, the first part of the Chrystie Street Connection opened, connecting the express tracks at the Broadway–Lafayette Street station one stop south to the Manhattan Bridge. On July 1, 1968, another section of the Chrystie Street Connection opened, allowing Sixth and Eighth Avenue local trains to use the Williamsburg Bridge. The Williamsburg Bridge connection has been used by the M train since 2010. The Sixth Avenue Line station was also served by the JFK Express from 1978 to 1990 when it was discontinued. As early as 1965, Manhattan borough president Earl Brown requested that mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. add funding for an escalator at the West Fourth Street station to the city's capital budget. Two up only escalators were installed in the station in 1970, connecting the Sixth Avenue Line platforms to the Eighth Avenue Line platforms; one escalator was installed on the northbound side, while the other was installed on the southbound side. As part of a $4.3 million project, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) closed the escalators for renovations in 1998. In 2002, the MTA announced that elevators would be installed at the West Fourth Street station. The elevator installation was delayed by over a year and was finally completed in April 2005, but the elevators then suffered from frequent breakdowns. In 2005 alone, the three elevators were out of service for a cumulative nine months, and one elevator was closed off for 134 days. That year, passengers made 57 complaints about the elevators, including seven instances in which riders were trapped in the elevators. Consequently, disability rights groups sued the MTA over the elevators.