Fulton Transit Center Opens and Commuters Look Up in Awe

Like many commuters, this woman stopped to photograph the newly opened Fulton Transit Center and its soaring domed ceiling. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

When commuters pushed through turnstiles at the Fulton Center transit hub beginning at 5 a.m. on Monday, many stopped in their tracks and, wide-eyed, looked around.

“Wow!” they said, one after another.

The most eye-catching feature of the $1.4 billion, nine-subway-line Fulton Center transit hub that opened this week is the oculus, a 110-foot-high circular dome topped by a glass ceiling that allows sunlight to fill the station. While many commuters barely took notice of the new station, never breaking their stride, others stopped, looked up at the soaring dome, and snapped photos.

“It’s triumphant,” said Kashuo Bennett, an architect from Park Slope who works in Lower Manhattan, who noted his fascination with the way that sunlight could permeate the station down to its lowest level.

“It’s absolutely beautiful,” said Jean Chen-Villalba, a South Street Seaport resident who came by to see the center and gaze at the oculus from the second-floor mezzanine. “I’m just looking at the lighting of the sun, how it comes into the building. I’m sort of mesmerized.”

The hub, which opened after years of delays and budget increases, is a high-tech environment––ads for Burberry, Glamour, T-Mobile and other brands along with animated artwork flash on screens. Digital kiosks are stationed throughout the hub to help passengers navigate the new station, where 300,000 riders are expected to pass through daily. And the sound of the PA system, announcing the next incoming train, was remarkably clear over the rumble of trains.

But in the midst of it all, some visitors discovered a sense of tranquility.

“I will say that there’s a peacefulness, strangely enough, in this hub,” said Josh Bach, a Tribeca resident who visited the center with friends Ivan Abrams and Joel Roodman after they dropped their children off at P.S. 234. “You look at it and it’s open and kind of quiet.”

Like others, Abrams was relieved that the transit center is finally a reality. The hub is seven years late in opening and went nearly double its projected $750 million budget.

“I’ve been walking by here for eight years,” Abrams said. “So this is a long time coming and I think that the retail will be great.”  (The station will eventually include 65,000 square feet of retail space.)

Bach wasn’t as impressed, ruing the loss of local businesses.

“All the small little shops, whether you liked them or not, all got squeezed out,” he said. “Now I see signs for Burberrys and other things, and it’s going to be all high-end. It’s another gigantic mall in New York, and the texture that was Lower Manhattan slowly disappears.”

Commuter Andrew LoBello of Ridgewood, Queens was also displeased, but for a different reason.

“It reminds me of some of the airports I’ve been to in Europe,” he said. “I understand what they’re going for. It’s a lot more modern, but personally, I don’t like it. I prefer the gritty New York.”

Julie Kuehndorf, a Battery Park City resident who had taken the 4 train into the station, also said the hub “doesn’t feel like New York.”

“But it’s certainly a lot more pleasant than the old station,” she added. “I love it.”

Rafael Gamba of Brooklyn noted that the hub had improved his commute.

“It was made easier,” he said. “It was just simpler to get out, to get oriented.”

Uday Durg, the MTA’s chief engineer who has been overseeing the project for the past 11 years, arrived before the morning rush hour. He was clearly pleased by what he saw as a whirl of commuters began to pass before him.

“Its a great feeling this morning,” he declared, “when people move seamlessly from one point to the other point without having to ask too many directions, when there’s a free flowing of people.”

But the true test, he said, would be at the rush hour peak, when a flood of passengers disembark from the A and E trains and move onto to the 4 and 5 platform—just as those trains arrive with their own load of commuters.

Durg invited a reporter to watch with him from a perch on the second-level mezzanine. Leaning on the railing, he stood silently, observing the movement until executives from Skanska, a major contractor on the project, stopped by to congratulate him. Soon, he headed upstairs with the group.

“It works,” he called back to the reporter. “It works!”