Destroyed on 9/11, Cortlandt Street subway station reopens this weekend

Three days before the 17th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, the Cortlandt Street subway station that was destroyed that day will reopen as the last piece of the WTC site. The MTA announced today that the new 1 train station, now dubbed WTC Cortlandt, will be back in use tomorrow, Saturday, September 8th, at noon.

MTA New York Transit President Andy Byford greeted the first train to stop at the station for service, a northbound 1 train that arrived at 12:01 p.m. Via MTA Flickr

As 6sqft previously reported:

Located directly under the World Trade Center site, the station was crushed by the collapse of Two World Trade Center. In order to restore service to Rector Street and South Ferry stations, workers demolished the rest of Cortlandt and built walls where the platforms stood. The line was able to reopen a year after 9/11, with trains bypassing the station.

The new station was originally supposed to open in 2014, but funding disputes between the Port Authority and the MTA pushed the reopening back four years. Work began in 2015 with a total cost of $158 million. It will have four entrances into the larger World Trade Center Transportation Hub, linking it to 11 other subway lines and the PATH.

In a statement the MTA said, “The station’s name references its location within the World Trade Center site as well as its legacy under Cortlandt Street, which existed above the station when the 1 line originally opened in July 1918 but was demolished during the construction of the World Trade Center in the late 1960s.”

WTC Cortlandt will feature mosaics by Ann Hamilton with words from the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1776 Declaration of Independence. It will have modern improvements such as wheelchair access, climate control, and fewer columns.