page_title: Church Avenue station (IND Culver Line)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Church Avenue station (IND Culver Line) / History
caption_attribution_description: F train travels southbound as G train leaves Ditmas Avenue station in Brooklyn during the snow storm that hit the New York City area on Tuesday, January 21, 2014. Photo: MTA / Patrick Cashin
context_page_description: Church Avenue is an express station on the IND Culver Line of the New York City Subway. Located at Church and McDonald Avenues in Kensington, Brooklyn, it is served by the F and G trains at all times, and by the <F> train during rush hours in the peak direction.
  The Church Avenue station was constructed by the Independent Subway System. It opened on October 7, 1933, as the new terminal of the Culver Line, which was known as the Smith Street Line or the South Brooklyn Line at the time. In 1954, this station ceased to be the line's terminal with the completion of the Culver Ramp, which connected the South Brooklyn Line and the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation's Culver Line and allowing service to run to Coney Island. Though the Church Avenue station contains four tracks and two island platforms, as with most express stations in the New York City Subway, the inner tracks see limited use, being used only by peak-direction <F> trains.
context_section_description: The Church Avenue station was the original southern terminus of the IND Culver Line, which was built as part of Mayor John Hylan's Independent Subway System (IND) to Coney Island. The line was planned to be extended to the south via a connection to the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT)'s Culver Line. To connect this line to the Eighth Avenue Line – the main trunk of the IND – a subway line was to run from Brooklyn Borough Hall south under Jay Street, Smith Street, Ninth Street, and several other streets to Cortelyou Road (later Church Avenue) and McDonald Avenue, just north of the Ditmas Avenue elevated station. A ramp would then lead onto the elevated BMT Culver Line. As originally designed, service to and from Manhattan would have been exclusively provided by Culver express trains, while all local service would have fed into the IND Crosstown Line. On October 7, 1933, this station opened as the new terminal of the line, as the line was extended from Bergen Street.
  Construction on the Culver Ramp, also referred to as the Culver Line Connection, between this station and the Ditmas Avenue station, began in June 1941 and was scheduled to be completed by the end of the year. The ramp was expected to cost $2 million, and along with new signals, and rehabilitation of the Culver elevated and lengthening of its stations to IND standards, the total cost of the project was estimated at over $11 million. Though the ramp was nearly complete, including rails and signal work, construction was halted later that year because of America's entrance into World War II. When the project was restarted in 1946, completion was delayed further due to continued material shortages and a lack of rolling stock to facilitate the new service. On October 30, 1954, the connection between the IND Brooklyn Line at Church Avenue and the BMT Culver Line at Ditmas Avenue opened, allowing IND trains to operate all the way to the Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue terminal.
  In 1958, there was a program in which subway riders could get their clothes dry cleaned at the station for a fee.
caption: The Culver Ramp south of the station
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