Summary: The original 1904 subway was, like most things in New York, Manhattancentric, but it did in fact reach into the Bronx. The Prospect Avenue station opened in November 1904, a month after the official subway opening. It was one of twelve elevated stations on the line. As with most elevated stations on the IRT, Prospect Avenue stations most distinctive feature is the control houses used for passenger entry. Here, there are two north and south bound. They are set indirectly across from one another on a busy and confusing cross section of Westchester, Prospect, and Longwood Avenues, and East 160th Street. In their design, architects Heins amp LaFarge were inspired by the existing Manhattan elevated railway stations. The larger structures are more traditionally Victorian than much of the firms subway work, but the platform lighting and details express the BeauxArts style Heins amp LaFarge used in most of their station design.The general size and style of the control houses has not changed in the past century. One of their most distinctive features is their roofs. They are low hanging hipped roofs, with all four roof faces rising to a ridge across the top. As a result, the front slope has a broader face than the narrow side sections. They were built with steel framing and wood siding, and covered in copper. The exterior walls were also covered in copper. Copper has been used as a waterproof roofing material for centuries. Since it is also resistant to corrosion, malleable, and strong under stress, it worked well as a material for the control houses. The copper is painted brick red, and is decorated with a fleurdelis decoration on the bracketed eaves.To enter the control houses, passengers walk through central bays on their street side. These bays project onto the sidewalk, and extend to the control house roof line. There, it is topped with an ornamental fan grill.Inside, the tall spaces are spanned by two steel arches. The spaces that originally served as public bathrooms are utility rooms today.Steel and cast iron stairways lead passengers up to the station platforms. The stair canopies also have gabled roofs. They have typical IRT station ironwork details, including a C scroll pattern that Heins amp LaFarge also used in brass and on castiron interior decoration.On the platforms, the dominant station feature is the windscreen, installed to protect passengers and their belongings from the elements. Original cast iron lampposts have been removed. But the replacements, painted green, are replicas of the originals. The economics of massproduction inherent in cast iron allowed the architects to design highly ornamental BeauxArts details for the lampposts.The graceful lines of this QueenAnne and BeauxArts style control house helped this prominent neighborhood structure blend into the surrounding architecture. When the station opened, this section of the east Bronx was considered an upandcoming upperclass neighborhood. Large, elegant apartment buildings surrounded the station, desirable because now their residents could easily commute across the Harlem River into Manhattan.
