Urban Exploring at 174th Street Subway Yard

The LTV Squad could possibly be one of the City's first modern-day urban explorers. For the past several decades, they have been sneaking into abandoned areas all around the City, then sharing photos of their explorations.

For a recent article, LTV Squad member Control posted tons of great shots from within the 174th street subway yard.

The 174th street subway yard is a cavernous space under Washington Heights that is currently used to store C trains. The subway was originally built by the IND, which was a forward thinking company plotting on building numerous subway routes that never came to fruition. It has been long said that this yard was actually built as a provisions for a subway route that was suppose to go over the George Washington Bridge.

Check out the full writeup for more on the 174th Street Subway Yard.

Track Map of the Yard & surrounding tracks.

Coming north from 168th street, the two center tracks ramp upward, allowing the southbound A tracks to pass underneath. Due to the limited space within this yard, at least one train is often laid up on the yard lead tracks

Looking back towards the yard leads / 168 street

Some impressive historic SaneSmith graffiti can be found here.

The walls, of course, are all covered in graffiti – much of it historic in nature.

Historic Tags from when kids came here to paint trains in the 1970s and 1980s

There’s also some worker graffiti, in official MTA maintenance paints.

At the very end of the yard, the tracks dead end at the wall.

There’s a tiny utility room here, stocked with some subway car cleaning materials. I’m not sure why this room exists – car cleaners usually perform their duties in terminal stations, not deep into dark layup yards where there aren’t even bench walls to provide easy access.

via LTV Squad

Matt Coneybeare

Editor in Chief

Matt enjoys exploring the City's with his partner and son. He is an avid marathon runner, and spends most of his time eating, running, and working on cool stuff.

Posts by Matt Coneybeare

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