In 2003, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (New York) announced plans to demolish the structure, citing its wood-construction as a fire hazard. The community intervened, emphasizing the building's historic importance, architectural significance, connecting to the adjacent community and the fact that several other wooden station houses on the subway system had been given landmark status earlier.
On June 29, 2004, the building achieved landmark status for its exterior. This allows renovations inside, but preserves (and probably will lead to restoration of) the major structure and exterior. The official designation report describes the building:
"The Avenue H station on the BMT line [...] is the city’s only shingled wooden cottage turned transit station house. Often compared to a country train stop, it originally served as a real estate sales office for developer Thomas Benton Ackerson to sell property in the adjacent neighborhood of Fiske Terrace, an early twentieth century example of planned suburban development. The structure, with a hipped and flared roof and wraparound porch, evokes in miniature the area’s Colonial Revival and Queen Anne houses. After nearly a century of commuter traffic, the Avenue H station remains in service and retains much historic fabric, from a corbelled chimney to peeled log porchcolumns. It is one of a very small number of wood-frame station houses surviving in the modern subway system, the only station adapted from a structure built for another function, and the only surviving station from Brooklyn’s once-extensive network of surface train lines, which had originally attracted Ackerson and numerous other developers to the area." [1] (http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/lpc/pdfs/reports/avenueh.pdf) (PDF file)
External link
The Little Station in the Woods (http://thethirdrail.net/9912/index.htm) - Historical article about the station before it was landmarked.
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