Fordham Road station (IND Concourse Line)

the station at Fordham Road & Jerome Avenue

New York City Subway station in the Bronx

The Fordham Road station is an express station on the IND Concourse Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of Fordham Road and Grand Concourse in one of the largest shopping districts in New York City, it is served by the D train at all times and the B train during rush hours only.

This station was built as part of the IND Concourse Line, which was one of the original lines of the city owned Independent Subway System (IND). The route of the Concourse Line was approved to Bedford Park Boulevard on June 12, 1925 by the New York City Board of Transportation. Construction of the line began in July 1928. The station opened on July 1, 1933, along with the rest of the Concourse subway. In 1981, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) listed the Fordham Road station among the 69 most deteriorated stations in the subway system.

The main fare control area, with the station's full time token booth, is located at the middle of the station at East 188th Street. It has four street stairs, one for each corner of the intersection with Grand Concourse. The token booth at this location had been closed temporarily in the 1970s. It was permanently closed in August 2003 and is no longer present. There were two additional exits and a passageway on the west side of Fordham Road and Grand Concourse. They were nearest to the former location of Alexander's and Caldor. Today, the building houses a mix of smaller stores. In 1989, the MTA proposed closing off the free zone passageway on the west side and convert the northwestern and southwestern entrances to exit only; formerly, they were only open from 6 a. m. to 9 p. m. This was done for safety reasons because the corridor was considered a crime haven. Despite the former proposal, the passageway remained open until April 1991, when the western areas were closed off to the public or operated reduced hours on an interim basis, and the stairs were also slabbed over on street level; the free zone passageway on the east side was also gated off. In 1993, riders wanted the western entrances reopened as they would have been safer and more convenient for shoppers going to the Fordham stores. The MTA did not reverse the decision because the western passageway was problematic before its closure and very few passengers used the exits.

The station lies within the Fordham Road Business Improvement District, the third largest shopping district in the city stretching from Third and Webster Avenues west to Jerome Avenue. The northwest corner of Fordham Road and Grand Concourse was the location of a large Alexander's department store (2 Fordham Square) from 1933 to 1992, and is currently anchored by P. C. Richard & Son and Marshalls. This is the closest station to Fordham Plaza (the eastern end of the shopping district), and the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University.