page_title: Lexington Avenue/59th Street station
section_title: IRT Lexington Avenue Line platforms
hierarchical_section_title: Lexington Avenue/59th Street station / IRT Lexington Avenue Line platforms
caption_attribution_description: 59th Street (IRT Lexington Avenue)
context_page_description: Lexington Avenue/59th Street is a New York City Subway station complex shared by the IRT Lexington Avenue Line and the BMT Broadway Line. It is located at Lexington Avenue between 59th and 60th Streets, on the border of Midtown and the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The station complex is the fourteenth-busiest in the system, with over 21 million passengers in 2016.
  Signed as 59th Street–Lexington Avenue, the complex is served by the:
  4, 6, and N trains at all times
  W train on weekdays
  5 and R trains at all times except late nights
  <6> express train during weekdays in peak direction
  A free out-of-system MetroCard transfer is available to the 63rd Street Lines by exiting the station and walking to the Lexington Avenue–63rd Street station.
context_section_description: 59th Street on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line is an express station. It has two stacked levels, each of which has two tracks and two side platforms. The upper level is used by local trains, and the lower level is used by express trains. The levels are separated by the BMT Broadway Line's platform directly underneath the local platforms and a mezzanine between the BMT platform and the express level. Long escalators connect the local and express platforms directly.
  The station used to have all green tile which has been covered up except for one "59th Street" sign near the south end of the northbound platform. There are whimsical stylized mosaics of coffee cups and slippers in varied colors at random spacing near the stairways to the Broadway and IRT local trains. This station was renovated in conjunction with the construction of the Bloomberg Tower at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue. Although a new entrance was constructed within the building, it has remained closed due to fears of icicle formation on a railing that is part of the building's design, directly above the street entrance. A legal battle between the city and the building's management over who is responsible for modifying the design has caused the entrance to be temporarily closed between 2003 and 2006.
  There is a direct exit to Bloomingdale's from the uptown local platform's fare control (this exit was used in the 2008 film Cloverfield). The underpass near the south end of the station was originally the northbound platform for the extension of the BMT Broadway Line to Queens. That line had been planned as two separate, one-track tunnels, one each under 59th and 60th Streets. Later on, it was decided to alter this layout in favor of a single two-track tunnel under 60th Street. The semi-completed platform under 59th Street was then converted to an underpass between the north and southbound platforms of the Lexington Avenue Line local tracks.
  On the upper level, north of the station, there is a storage/lay up track between the two tracks. It ends at a bumper block at its north end. It merges with the two local tracks on its southern end.
  In 2019, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that the station would become ADA-accessible as part of the agency's 2020–2024 Capital Program.
caption: An uptown 6 train of R142A cars enters on the local platform
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