Myrtle Avenue

Myrtle Avenue was a local station on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line. It opened in 1915, as for all other stations on the BMT Fourth Avenue Line (except 95th Street). It closed, following the reconfiguration of the Dekalb Avenue Junction.

Construction And operation
The subway from the Manhattan Bridge south via 4 Ave was part of the same project as the Centre St loop in Manhattan, pre-dating the Dual System, called the Brooklyn Loop line. Construction began in 1909. The history of the segment from the bridge through De Kalb Ave is extremely complex, because of provisions for unbuilt routes and changes of plans during construction, and major reconstruction in 1956-1962.

As originally planned, the two separate track pairs coming off the Manhattan Bridge entered a subway and became a four-track route in Brooklyn. Plans from 1908 indicate five tracks in the area of Myrtle Ave and six tracks near De Kalb Ave, with stations at Tillary St (two blocks north of Myrtle Ave) and at De Kalb Ave. A junction was built at Fulton St for a never-built branch to run via Lafayette Ave and Broadway and back to Manhattan over the Williamsburg Bridge. Provision was made near the Manhattan Bridge for a loop back to Brooklyn. The area near Myrtle Ave was redesigned in 1910 for four tracks, and the station was relocated to Myrtle Ave.

At De Kalb Ave, options were left open for a connection to the first subway run by the IRT, even though the Rapid Transit Board had decided against it because building it would force giving the new subway to the IRT. The IRT main track level is near the surface, at the level of the mezzanine of De Kalb Ave station. Outbound, the connection would come off the local track at the curve just south of De Kalb Ave, and run into the lower level at Nevins St. Inbound, it would similarly come off the IRT local track just outside Nevins St, and cross over all the new route's tracks, and to allow for this, the De Kalb Ave station mezzanine does not extend to the east side of Flatbush Ave, where the connecting track would be.

Once the Dual System was adopted, a junction was built north of De Kalb Ave for the route from the Montague St tunnel. The junction south of the station originally built for the Lafayette Ave subway was used instead for a connecting link to the BRT's Brighton Beach railroad.

Myrtle Ave remained a local stop with side platforms, but most of the express trains over the bridge stopped there. Some express trains used the original center track pair to bypass both Myrtle Ave and De Kalb Ave. Use of the center pair was necessary to get all the rush hour trains through De Kalb Ave, but otherwise a stop at De Kalb Ave was useful to let passengers change trains.

The 19th century elevated line carrying the combined Myrtle Ave El, Lexington Ave El, and 5 Ave El did not have a station over the Myrtle Ave subway station, because the street above the subway, Flatbush Ave Extension, was newly built in 1909, cutting through the blocks to connect the bridge with the end of Flatbush Ave at Fulton St. The failure of the company to build a new elevated station at what could have been a major transfer point is one of the many missed opportunities in the New York transit system.

The De Kalb Ave section was the choke point for the entire BMT Broadway subway operation, with a lot of merges and some routings crossing others at grade in the swiches on both sides of the station. The maximum train capacity of the system was set here. After decades of problems, the Transit Authority began a rebuild of the area in 1956, adding some new trackage to eliminate all the grade crossings and provide places to hold trains approaching merge points.

Myrtle Ave station was a casualty of the rebuild. A new track had to be added on the west side to allow for a grade-separated crossing. The original southbound "local" track at the platform had to be depressed to a lower grade to cross under, and the new track wiped out the southbound platform. The northbound platform was left in place but no longer operated.

At De Kalb Ave, the platform extensions into a curve south of the station, built in 1927 to allow for longer trains, were closed and replaced by a straight extension to the north opened in 1960. The abandoned portions can be seen from the open platforms and from train windows.

The 1960 extension eliminated switches at the north end of the station, so from that time, the inner face of the island platforms can be used only by trains to and from the tunnel route. The equivalent routings were provided for by new crossovers north and south of the station.

Masstransiscope
In 1980 the Masstransiscope zoetrope artwork by Bill Brand was installed in the station. The artwork consists of 228 hand-painted panels that are behind a long slit light box. The artwork stretches for the full 300 feet of the platform. On September 17, 1980, passengers could start seeing the completed work from trains. This allows riders on the Manhattan-bound B and ​Q trains (and D trains during late nights when they stop at DeKalb Avenue) right before the bridge to look to their right and experience the illusion that the paintings are moving. By the mid-1980s, despite Brand's efforts to maintain the artwork, it fell into a state of disrepair. It was briefly repaired in about 1990, but it was soon covered in graffiti. After falling into a state of disrepair, graffiti was removed in 2008 and the artwork restored. Masstransiscope was again covered by graffiti during the complete subway shutdown during Hurricane Sandy and again restored after that.

Originally, Brand came up with a more ambitious plan using blown up photographs to create a virtual film strip–these would have been regularly swapped out.