The Lexington Avenue/51st Street station is a New York City Subway station complex on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line and IND Queens Boulevard Line. The station is located on Lexington Avenue and stretches from 51st Street to 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. It is served by the .
The complex comprises two stations: 51st Street on the Lexington Avenue Line and Lexington Avenue–53rd Street (originally Lexington–Third Avenues) on the Queens Boulevard Line. Originally two separate stations, these were connected in 1988 via a transfer passage, which was opened with the construction of 599 Lexington Avenue. Approximately 50,000 riders transfer between the Lexington Avenue and Queens Boulevard Lines each weekday.
In 2019, the station complex had an annual ridership of 18,957,465, making it the tenth-busiest in the system.
History
IRT Lexington Avenue Line
Planning and construction
Following the completion of the original subway line operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), there were plans to construct the Broadway–Lexington Avenue Line along Manhattan's east side. The New York Public Service Commission adopted plans for what was known as the Broadway–Lexington Avenue route on December 31, 1907. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT; after 1923, the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation or BMT) submitted a proposal to the Commission, dated March 2, 1911, to operate this line as part of the tri-borough system. Originally, the commission had assigned the operation of the Lexington Avenue Line in Manhattan to the BRT, as the IRT had withdrawn from negotiations over the proposed tri-borough system. The IRT proposed in December 1911 that it be assigned the Lexington Avenue Line, in exchange for dropping its opposition to the BRT's operation of the Broadway Line. The Lexington Avenue Line was to connect with the IRT's existing subway north of Grand Central–42nd Street. The IRT submitted an offer for what became its portion of the Dual Contracts on February 27, 1912.
The Dual Contracts, two operating contracts between the city and the BMT and IRT, were adopted on March 4, 1913, and signed on March 19. The IRT was authorized to construct a local station on its Lexington Avenue Line at 51st Street. The Public Service Commission planned to split the original Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) system from looking like a "Z" system (as seen on a map) to an "H"-shaped system. The original system would be split into three segments: two north–south lines, carrying through trains over the Lexington Avenue and Broadway–Seventh Avenue Lines, and a west–east shuttle under 42nd Street. This would form a roughly "H"-shaped system. It was predicted that the subway extension would lead to the growth of the Upper East Side and the Bronx. The IRT was authorized to construct a local station on its Lexington Avenue Line at Lexington Avenue and 51st Street. Contracts for the section of the line south of 53rd Street had still not been awarded by early 1914 because of the changes to the original plans.
In May 1914, the Public Service Commission began soliciting bids for the construction of section 7 of the Lexington Avenue Line, which stretched between 43rd and 53rd Streets and included a station at 51st Street. IRT subsidiary Rapid Transit Subway Construction Company received a $1,915,164 contract to build section 7 the next month. The Public Service Commission received the rights in July 1915 to build subway entrances within the Nursery and Child's Hospital at the southeastern corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, which would have served the IRT station there. Although the Lexington Avenue Line north of 53rd Street was almost completed by the end of 1915, that segment could not be opened because the rest of the line was not complete. In particular, the section between 43rd and 53rd Streets was only 37 percent done. Work on section 7 of the line was delayed in mid-1916 when numerous workers went on strike. Section 7 was 42 percent complete by September 1916 and was 77 percent finished by the following March.