NYCT: A new station rises from the ruins

Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
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Seventeen years after MTA New York City Transit’s Cortlandt Street Station on the No. 1 subway line was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, a new station has opened to take its place.

The WTC Cortlandt station officially opened at noon on Saturday, Sept. 8. Construction of the new station began in 2015, when the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority was given control of the site, which is located within the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey’s World Trade Center site. WTC Cortlandt has been constructed within the footprint of the original Cortlandt Street subway station, which was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks when the Twin Towers collapsed after being struck by passenger airliners (below).

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The new station is fully accessible, has fewer columns for easier customer flow, and is also air-tempered to reduce ambient temperatures on hot days. Similar to other newly built and newly renovated subway stations, electronic signage displays real-time service information to help customers plan their trips.

“The station’s name references its location within the World Trade Center site as well as its legacy under Cortlandt Street, which existed above the station when the line originally opened in July 1918 (as part of the Interborough Rapid Transit system) but was demolished during construction of the World Trade Center in the late 1960s,” MTA noted.

The station features a new mosaic by artist Ann Hamilton featuring text from the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence and the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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