(
)
They’re signs of the times — old times.
On the A line in the Rockaways, the Beach 98th Street-Playland stop sits next to a high-rise housing development in an otherwise depressed neighborhood.
There’s nothing playful about the area, where the roller coaster of the once-popular amusement park Rockaways’ Playland rumbled until the theme park shuttered in 1985.
But it’s no oversight that the Playland moniker remains. After facing community opposition to updating station names, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority no longer tries to replace old signs in the system.
“This is New York City, and neighborhood identity is strong here,” said MTA spokesman Charles Seaton. “Anytime we have tried to change the name, community residents have objected. Keeping the original name of a station maintains a historic link that is important to a lot of folks.”
In Sunnyside, Queens, residents were in an uproar in 1998 when the MTA moved to change the name of the “46th Street-Bliss Street station on the No. 7 line.
Renamed 46th Street in the 1920s — when the citywide street grid was imposed on the independent towns that made up the borough of Queens — Bliss Street was a confusing blast from the past. The MTA planned to change the name, but residents revolted.
“One of the attractions of moving to Sunnyside was getting on and off the train at Bliss Street,” said Pat Dorfman, who started the petition to save the Bliss Street subway name and collected 1,900 signatures in favor of keeping the link to the past.
In 2003, she successfully petitioned the City Council to also rename part of 46th Street “Bliss Street,” and saved the name of her station.
“They may not have official status as street names any longer, but they do have a historical context,” Seaton said.
Residents have raised similar objections in order to save names like Lowery Street, Boyd Avenue, Rawson Street and Beach 44th Street-Frank Avenue on the No. 7 and A train lines — street names that haven’t existed on the ground for more than 50 years.
“When the No. 7 train was built to Corona in 1917, you had the old street names,” said official Queens borough historian Jack Eichenbaum. “Only later were the names changed to reflect the street grid, and the stations retain their old names.”
It’s not just street names but also places that live on as subway destinations.
In Elmhurst, the Woodhaven Boulevard-Slattery Plaza station on the E, M and R lines still refers to the complex of mom-and- pop shops that disappeared when the Long Island Expressway was built in the 1940s.
The Grand Avenue-Newtown stop on the M and R lines carries the name of a long-gone township that stretched from the East River to the Flushing River.
But the historic stations may be short-lived. For the right price, officials at the cash-strapped transit agency said they’d sell station-naming rights throughout the system to corporate buyers.
In June 2009, Forest City Ratner signed a $4 million deal with the MTA to change for 20 years the name of the Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street station to Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center. The controversial change went into effect in May.
“We’re open to other station naming-rights deals,” said Seaton, who added that Barclays is the only one of 468 stations where the MTA has inked a deal.
The name change has inspired a line of T-shirts, available on the Internet, that read: “I’m still calling it Atlantic Ave.-Pacific St.”