14th Street – Eighth Avenue

The 14th Street/Eighth Avenue station is an underground New York City Subway station complex shared by the IND Eighth Avenue Line and the BMT Canarsie Line. Located at Eighth Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan, the station is served by the A, E, and L trains at all times and the C train at all times except late nights. The whole complex is ADA-compliant, with an accessible station entrance at 14th Street. This complex was renovated at the beginning of the 21st century. There are several MTA New York City Transit Authority training facilities located in the mezzanine. The station complex contains an artwork by Tom Otterness called Life Underground, which features whimsical bronze sculptures, including a sewer alligator, scattered about the station.

The Dual Contracts, which called for the expansion of the New York City Subway system, were formalized in early 1913. As part of the Dual Contracts, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (later the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, or BMT) was to construct a subway from 14th Street in Manhattan to Canarsie in Brooklyn; this became the BMT's Canarsie Line. Booth and Flinn was awarded the contract to construct the line on January 13, 1916. Clifford Milburn Holland served as the engineer-in-charge during the construction. The line opened in phases, reaching Sixth Avenue in 1924. Meanwhile, New York City mayor John Francis Hylan's original plans for the Independent Subway System (IND), proposed in 1922, included building over 100 miles (160 km) of new lines and taking over nearly 100 miles (160 km) of existing lines. The lines were designed to compete with the existing underground, surface, and elevated lines operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and BMT. 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 14th Street.

In the years after the Canarsie Line opened, it saw extremely high ridership, prompting the Central Mercantile Association and the 14th Street Association to request that the line be extended west to Eighth Avenue. In July 1927, New York City comptroller Charles W. Berry proposed extending the Canarsie Line to Eighth Avenue, and adding a transfer to the proposed IND station there, as part of a 16-point plan to reduce congestion in the New York City Subway system. Members of the 14th Street Association even proposed extending the line further west, under the Hudson River to New Jersey. The Transit Commission notified the BMT in March 1928 that it had approved the extension of the Canarsie Line two blocks under 14th Street, from Sixth to Eighth Avenue; this would allow the line to connect with the new IND subway. By July 1928, the BOT was planning to award contracts for a two-block extension of the Canarsie Line. The same month, D. C. Serber submitted a low bid of $3.16 million. The extension was the final portion of the Canarsie Line that the BMT was required to build as part of the Dual Contracts. The BOT hoped that the extension would help relieve congestion at the Canal Street station in lower Manhattan. After the New York City Board of Estimate approved the extension in August 1928, local civic group 14th Street Merchants' Association wrote a letter to mayor Jimmy Walker, expressing its support for the extension. That September, the BOT awarded a $3.15 million contract for the construction of the extension. During the extension's construction, in November 1929, a sec

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