☞ REMEMBER: The Lenox Kiosk Circa 1930

At top is an old photo circa 1930 with an arial view of a Lenox Avenue Turkish-inspired kiosk and the surrounding street activity.  All of these Heins & Lefarge designed stations from the early 1900's would eventually be destroyed in the latter half of the 20th century (probably at a time when the city did not want to encourage loitering at any subway stop) but one such structure has miraculously come back to life in recent decades.  The center photo show the 6 train kiosk as it stood at downtown's Astor Place before it was demolished but that particular image would eventually help the station come back to life.

We have heard that downtown locals were displeased with the MTA's decision to tear down the Astor Place cast iron kiosk and when renovations were made to that subway location in 1986, the above ground structure was reconstructed as part of the plan. Robinson Iron re-casted all the architectural parts based off of old photos on file and built the replica slightly larger than the original to accommodate a modern flow of pedestrian traffic (lower photo). So if one wants to get a sense of what the stations in Harlem used to look like during the Renaissance years, a trip to see the downtown 6 station will definitely help convey that bit of nostalgia. Check out the Robinson Iron site for more detail: LINK. Click on images to enlarge