The Litle Train Station That Could

Along Brooklyn’s Q subway line sits a small wooden cottage with a chimney, wooden shingles, and surrounded by antique rocking chairs. This is not a set piece for “Country Living,” but an active subway station which serves the neighborhoods of Midwood and Flatbush. This unique stationhouse, the only one in NYC with wooden shingles, was nearly lost. Its survival owes to its history and a Supreme Court decision defining regulatory takings.

Before the law, however, it’s important to understand how this station came to be. Long before the Q line, central Brooklyn was largely farmland stretching between the urban downtown Brooklyn to Coney Island. Wealthy New Yorkers would travel to their beach getaway along the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway (“Railway”), which followed today’s Q line. Around the turn of the 20th century, developers targeted central Brooklyn’s farmland. One, T. B. Ackerson, built a planned Victorian neighborhood marketed to wealthy riders of the Railway. In 1906 Ackerson built his Real Estate Office/Railway Stop—a wooden cottage—directly alongside the railway tracks.

By 2003, the railway had become the MTA’s Q line. The old stationhouse had survived, becoming Avenue H Station, but the MTA deemed it “a fire hazard,” and planned a $20.2 million replacement. Despite opposition, and other projects where the MTA had successfully preserved wooden structures, demolition seemed imminent. There was only one entity which stood in their way: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (“Commission”)—whose authority to intervene stemmed from another train station case just 25 years earlier. The Commission had the authority to designate the station as a landmark, preventing the MTA from destroying it and requiring they maintain the exterior of the wooden structure, which the MTA could argue was a regulatory taking because it prevented them from removing the wooden station which they saw as a “fire hazard.”

The Commission was able to intervene without performing a regulatory taking by using the test in another case it was involved in: Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York. The Commission had sought to stop a developer from constructing a multi-story office building engulfing NY’s famous Grand Central Station. The developer argued the Commission’s actions denied them valuable air rights above the station. The Court held in finding a regulatory taking, courts must consider the “economic impact of the regulation” to an owner, interference with an “investment-backed expectation,” and the “character of the action and on the nature and extent of the interference with rights in the parcel.” Because the landmark designation did not interfere with continued use of the railway station, did not prevent construction of a smaller project on the site, and opened development opportunities elsewhere in the city, the landmark designation did not constitute a regulatory taking which required compensation.

The Penn Central framework gave the Commission a basis to landmark the Avenue H Station 25 years later. The Commission had to balance the economic impact of the landmark, its effect on the MTA’s investment-backed expectations, and the extent to which the designation would interfere with the MTA’s plans for the station. Landmarking would economically burden the MTA by requiring preservation work to bring the wooden station up to code and limiting its ability to build a new station with benefits such as increased capacity and ADA compliance. In fact, when the MTA later completed modernization upgrades in 2021 to improve ADA access, it still had to construct a new ramp and entrance beside the stationhouse. In petitions to the Commission, residents emphasized the value the station brought the community outweighed this, as many residents were brought to the neighborhood by the unique architectural history which the stationhouse served as a central feature of, and the cost to the MTA to consider alternatives was minuscule considering the vast scale of the Subway system with numerous unique challenges they faced with every station. As to investment-backed expectations, the MTA had already committed $20.2 million to a new station. However, construction had not yet begun, the MTA faced significant budget gaps which might have required them to cancel or fund construction through debt supported by public subsidies, and MTA procedures often left delayed projects remaining on the books for years, which reduced the weight of that commitment. Finally, although the MTA originally sought to replace the station because it viewed it as a fire hazard, landmarking did not prevent safety improvements. The preservation of other wooden stations showed such improvements were feasible, and the station as it had already served the community for nearly a century while undergoing changes to integrate it into the subway system without altering the exterior. Accordingly, the Commission was within its authority to landmark the station, stop demolition, and require the MTA to consider alternatives that preserved exterior.

In 2004, Avenue H Station was officially landmarked. Applying the Penn Central framework preserved a piece of the community’s history. Some might argue that the outcome delayed vital improvements to accessibility and modernization in a subway system that was changing to meet current demands. Others would respond that the project’s uncertainties, including the MTA’s financial insecurity and the potential loss of a historic community landmark, outweighed the speculative gains in safety and utility that could have been achieved through other means. The fact that the station was eventually upgraded while its stationhouse remained intact shows that preservation and development are not mutually exclusive. Rather, landmarking ensures that history and community character are considered alongside future use when property decisions are made.

Samuel Tyroler is a law student at the American University Washington College of Law and was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Avenue_H_Station_House.jpg

Image: The Legendary Ranger at English Wikipedia, Avenue H Station House.