The IND station were designed as a single transit hub under Columbus Circle. The line, which opened in 1932, contains a 4-track, 3-platform express station at 59th Street–Columbus Circle, underneath the original IRT station. The Columbus monument was shored up during construction, and obstructions to traffic were minimized. At Columbus Circle, workers had to be careful to not disrupt the existing IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line or Columbus Circle overhead. Īn additional subway line-the Independent Subway System (IND)'s Eighth Avenue Line, serving the present-day A, B, C, and D trains-was built starting in 1925. The platforms of the IRT subway station were lengthened in 1957–1959, requiring further excavations around Columbus Circle. The station only served local trains express trains bypassed the station. By February 1904, the station underneath was largely complete, and service on the subway line began on October 27, 1904. During construction, traffic in the circle was so dangerous that the Municipal Art Society proposed redesigning the roundabout. As part of the subway line's construction, the 59th Street–Columbus Circle station was built underneath the circle. Subway construction under the Columbus monument in 1901īy 1901, construction on the first subway line of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (now the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, used by the 1, 2, and 3 trains) required the excavation of the circle, and the column and streetcar tracks through the area were put on temporary wooden stilts. After the 1892 installation of the Columbus Column in the circle's center, it became known as 'Columbus Circle', although its other names were also used through the 1900s. An 1871 account of the park referred to the roundabout as a 'grand circle'.

Ĭolumbus Circle was originally known generically as 'The Circle'. The Columbus Monument was placed at the center of the circle in 1892. The actual circle was approved two years later. Clearing of the land area for the circle started in 1868. Similar plazas were planned at the southeast corner of the park (now Grand Army Plaza), the northeast corner ( Duke Ellington Circle), and the northwest corner ( Frederick Douglass Circle).

It abuts the Merchant's Gate, one of the park's eighteen major gates. The traffic circle, located at Eighth Avenue/Central Park West, Broadway, and 59th Street/Central Park South, was designed as part of Frederick Law Olmsted's 1857 vision for Central Park, which included a rotary on the southwest corner of the park.

Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton, is located to the southwest, and the Theater District is to the southeast and the Lincoln Square section of the Upper West Side is to the northwest.

The name is also used for the neighborhood that surrounds the circle for a few blocks in each direction. The circle is named after the monument of Christopher Columbus in the center, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The circle is the point from which official highway distances from New York City are measured, as well as the center of the 25 miles (40 km) restricted-travel area for C-2 visa holders. 61st Street, Ninth Avenue, 57th Street, Seventh Avenueġ, A, B, C, and D trains at 59th Street–Columbus Circle stationĬolumbus Circle is a traffic circle and heavily trafficked intersection in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located at the intersection of Eighth Avenue, Broadway, Central Park South ( West 59th Street), and Central Park West, at the southwest corner of Central Park.

Robert on columbus circle