Fulton Street Transit Center Design Unveiled

The MTA has revealed a design for the new Fulton Street Transit Center, and it looks incredible. The NY Times has a description of what the new transit center will offer, design wise, with special attention to the centerpiece of the station, a "tapering, conical, 110-foot-tall steel-and-glass dome that would emerge from within a 50-foot-high glass-box pavilion at Broadway and Fulton Street," which will bring light to the subway platforms and walkways. Reporter David Dunlap writes:

The oculus may remind some viewers of the Pantheon. The convex taper may recall the form of ancient sikhara spires in Indian architecture or Norman Foster's new Swiss Re headquarters in London, better known as the gherkin.
New Yorkers, never shy about nicknaming unusual architecture (the Tombs, the Church of the Holy Zebra, the Lipstick Building) may find it hard to resist thinking of this structure as a jeweled egg to Mr. Calatrava's birdlike terminal.

Another interesting bit about the design is that a building that MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow owns (the old AT&T at 195 Broadway) will benefit from the transit center's placement. However, Kalikow, who stayed out of the design process and consulted with ethics boards, says, "I didn't buy this building in 1983 and say 'Just think - in 21 years, I'm going to be chairman of the M.T.A. and there's going to be a great station.'" The Straphangers' Gene Russianoff tells the Times that he feels Kalikow maintained his distance as well as give the Straphangers' support for this new design.

The Fulton Street Transit Center project will bring together the A, C, J, M, Z, 2, 3, 4 and 5 lines. For more information about the project, visit the MTA's site. However, the project will be introduced today at the Center for Architecture, 536 La Guardia Place, between Bleecker and West Third Streets, at 4PM. The Times says that "models, computer animations and drawings will be on view at the center through mid-July, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays."